The prime minister says his ruling party PPP has implemented 80 percent of the so-called charter of democracy. So what? Has that thrown out terrorism, extremism and militancy from the country and brought peace, security and tranquility to the people? Has that led up to a booming national economy, generating jobs and opportunities aplenty for the citizens to advance and prosper? Has that wiped out power load-shedding, gas shortages, and petrol CNG scarcities from the country? Has that curbed spiraling cost of living, making the people’s lives bit easier and livable? Has that that spawned abundance of facilities worth the name for the masses for their children’s schooling and their families’ healthcare? And has that given them a tidy and efficient administration to serve them dedicatedly and do their jobs competently without their having to grease some palms? And what if his party implements the rest 20 percent of this “miraculous” charter in his term’s remaining two years, as he says it would? Will then become an El Dorado of Pakistan, with canals of honey and rivers of milk flowing all over it? Will ever indeed the prime minister understand what are the people’s real needs and how a gigantic failure has he been in living up to their expectations so far? Had he had any sense of the public pulse, he would have known it was not a change in power equations but a change to their lives the people had been craving for, on which account he has been such a huge disappointment to them. Never ever had they had such an inept, incompetent and corrupt government as is his, is the people’s shrill resonating from corner to corner of the country. Never ever had the citizens been dealt as raw a deal as on his watch is the deafening public outcry. Discontent, despondency, frustration and disgust are reigning supreme in every niche of the land. And yet the prime minister is gloating of a feat that has no taker at all on any street. From day one, the mass of the people had had no infatuation for this spurious charter. Nothing it had in it for them; no recipe it contained for the biting problems besieging their miserable lives. It was all about the ambitions, yearnings and grouses of the elites. Even though funnily labeled as “democracy” charter, that was a mere chicanery, a big hoax. In reality, nothing had it do with democracy, when we are no democracy at all but a plutocracy in essence, substance and content. No rule of the people, for the people and by the people we are. A rule of the elites, for the elites and by the elites we in reality are, verifiably. Our being a democracy is patently a big lie, churned out by the blue-blood and promoted equally deceitfully by their cheerleaders in the media, commentariat and chattering classes. Both lie, blandly and hypocritically. How democracy could we be when 70 percent of our citizens are still in these contemporary times living in the oppressive thralldom of feudal lords in our sprawling countryside, with no right even to their lives, honour and dignity, what to speak of freedom to vote as they will? Come election, the same overbearing aristocracy or its favoured henchmen will always return to the governments and legislatures. Only faces may change; but change would not the blood or the pedigree. Still, the prime minister could have spared the masses he has ignored throughout so callously the torture of sprinkling salt on their anguished hearts and wounded souls with this audacious democracy charter talk. Even the toadying cheerleaders of the blue-blood have lately become much less talkers of it. Not that a people showing no pluck to stand up for their rights and harbouring among their ranks a spineless younger generation deserve such mercies. They get what they deserve rightly: ignominy, humiliation and neglect. Still, the prime minister can afford to be magnanimous. Rub he should not again this democracy charter perfidy on the gored bodies of the prostrate masses. If he gives them their needs, they would do without a democracy charter.
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