Pakistani Politicians: Will they ever?

Will they ever have time for the masses? Just listen to the discourse of the politicos over these days? It is all about their petty politics; to be more precise, about their electoral politics. They are haggling over the timing of the impending general election, over its transparency, over the interim government to oversee it and what not. What is the missing outright from their discourse are the awam, the people. Then, is this whole of talk all about the change of faces, not the change of style in governance? And does this country exist only for their loathsome political games and power plays, and not for those 180 million people, mostly living in abject poverty and crying for some relief to their doleful lots? Why don’t the power contenders tell the people what have they in their plans for their betterment and uplift? Isn’t it because the masses have never ever figured any compellingly in their political calculus? Although they ostensibly do all their politics in the name of the people, the people actually are no any critical or decisive factor in their real calculations. Only capturing power is. What else could it be when a political eminence dishes out impetuously the slogan that if returned to power he would make a new Pakistan? Couldn’t it be a mere pretence, just a deceit when he doesn’t explain how would he go about his intent of remaking of Pakistan? More awfully, doesn’t it tell that the eminence doesn’t even know what he is talking? But do any of the political eminences have any idea how much people are disgusted of them, particularly for giving them such a short shrift as have they over these times? The people are going through the worst of times in their lives during these past nearly five years. Yet these grandees have on their tongues only their own politics, not the people’s woes. They talk of elections, not the people’s unenviable economic plight. They talk of transparency of elections, not of the people’s snowballing sense of insecurity. They talk of impartial interim governments, but not of the ways of addressing the people’s grievances and wants. These indeed are the times when the political eminences should have at least spoken of the people, of whom they have spoken not all through these years. Ideas should have been floating as to how to give a pushup to the nation’s sagging economy. Suggestions should have been flowing out from various political quarters on how to create jobs and opportunities for the masses and the multitudes of the educated unemployed. The political players should have been in a real competition of proposing ways and means for educating the nation’s children and providing facilities for healthcare to its citizens. And they should have been in a scramble in mooting innovative ideas to fight out extremism and intolerance that has taken away all sense of safety and security from the masses to live in constant fear and fright. But none of this is happening at all. It is the politics, not the people, that stays on the tip of the politicos’ tongue even at this point in time. Little wonder, the people have washed these political eminences off their minds as completely as have these eminence wiped out the masses from their high minds. None of the eminences comes across to the people as leaders. They all are taken by the masses as mere chicaners and charlatans. It is only the select constellation of the media, the commentariat, the chattering classes and the civil society groups that pays court them. On the street, they all have become a big, big zero. Over there, nobody takes notice of them. Nobody listens what they speak. Nobody cares what they talk. And yet these eminences behave as if they are tall figures while in the popular estimation they have become even lesser than dwarfs. Still, these eminences have a chance to rehabilitate themselves with the masses. But for that they have to become relevant to the masses. That necessarily postulates that they talk less of politics and more of people. Will they? Perhaps, they will not, simply because they are incapable of talking things serious. They know only playing to the gallery, which comes natural to the minds feeble. Anyway, let’s hope.