Nawaz Lohar : What has he on offer?

EDITORIAL:THE FRONTIER POST

What has he on offer?

With much ado has the PML (N) supremo, Mian Nawaz Sharif, launched a campaign to oust the Zardari regime. Definitely, no mountains will weep and no streets will wail if this regime goes, such an unprecedented grand failure has it been in administering the state and in giving an alleviating deal to the country’s masses. But the guru must tell the people what has he on offer for them, as certainly they wouldn’t want to be out of the frying-pan to fall into the fire. It is not their painful adversities he has to dwell upon. They need no telling of this. Living in the splendours of Raiwind palaces and luxurious abodes here and abroad, mixing with the rich and supping with the wealthy, and moving around in the select company of the nation’s fat bellies, he couldn’t imaginably have even the foggiest idea of the burning grill they are being roasted on. They want to hear of recipes, if he has any in his bag, to address their tragic lot. And it is not just corruption in high places they want to hear from him when his own credentials on this score stand devastatingly besmirched in the popular eye. He may be thinking, mistakenly, that with this chant he is scoring points with the public, which in fact he is not. On the street, his postures of piety have no takers. He and his siblings too are facing corruption cases, pending before the courts. His contention of the cases being politically motivated carries no conviction with the people, either. The Zardari crowd too takes the same stand, asserting they had been framed up by him vindictively. So long as the courts do not exonerate him, he too stands accused of corruption charges as they do. Both are thus sailing in the same boat in the popular perception. In fact, the people’s woes go much beyond corruption in high places, when this evil phenomenon is so ubiquitously entrenched that it confronts them at every official level to have even their most legitimate works done by greasing some palms. For decades on end, they have craved for clean, lean and efficient administration firmly hinged on merit and quality, which they have got not. Not even he himself fulfilled their wish in his own two stints in power. He too stuffed up the administrative machinery with favourites in key positions and political appointees all around. Still, if he is to come any credible on this plane, he must tell the masses what has he in plans to give them a reformed and delivering administration, with merit the sole criterion of recruitment and no political interference and patronage in postings and transfers. Now for a change he must stop lamenting the Zardari regime’s collapse in tackling the people’s economic woes and start speaking of what cures has he in mind to alleviate their economic predicament. He must tell how he intends to revive the nation’s sagging economy to produce national wealth and bring about progress and prosperity to the country and the people. Instead of deploring the raging unemployment, he must unveil his job creation plans. Enough of crocodile tears has he shed on the disastrous energy shortage on the Zardari sinecures’ watch. He should now turn to speaking out the remedies he has thought out, if at all, to wipe out this destructive shortage playing havoc with our people’s lives and the nation’s industries and businesses. The people’s needs are urgent and he must tell what quick fixes has he charted out to meet their pressing demand.Further, he should start telling what has he planned for the emancipation of haris and tenants from the land barons’ serfdom, the salvation of enslaved bonded labour living in the debt trap generations after generations, equitable redistribution of farming land, spread of social networks for the downtrodden, and expansion of speakable family healthcare and children educational facilities for the poor. The point is now that he has launched into a regime change venture, the people must know what on offer is a deal for which they should storm out on the streets and brave by the police lathies. After all, what could be the sense if one pack of clueless rulers is dispatched to be replaced by another clueless pack?And he would better stop rubbing too much his democracy crap, a big hoax. No democracy are we, but only a plutocracy actually. The people know this, and also that we will stay a plutocracy so long as the fat bellies hold the monopoly of the nation’s politics, which they certainly would in ages to come. The guru himself has famously hungered once unquenchably to be the nation’s Amirul Momineen, a law unto himself, answerable to none, and an unchallengeable ruler for lifetime