Pakistan: Silly cacophony

What is all this hullabaloo about? While the ruling PPP contends it is contacting all the opposition parties on the interim government to ensure credible elections, one strand of the PML (N) confirms it is talking but its stalwart Chaudhry Nisar insists it is not. But why all this shrill? Why this silly cacophony at all? What will change even if the elections are held? Will not the same pedigrees, the same patriarchies and the same dynasties make to the legislatures and to the governments? Over these past decades, has it not been so after each and every election held during the period? Then how do the sages preach that things will change if elections are held uninterruptedly? And why would it be any different this time round? Have the entrenched dynasts released their parties from their strangleholds and turned them into open houses to the commoners to get in and secure berths in the legislatures and the governments? Have the fat-bellied landed aristocrats and gluttonous nouveau riches freed the nation’s politics from their clenched fists and thrown it open to the commoners for the talented and meritorious from amongst them to emerge to lead and guide the nation? You must be joking. It is the status quo that is in rule. And reign and rule it will in future too. Even the rising star has demonstrated it conclusively that he too is actually a man of the status quo, not of change. Not only has he embraced warmly every traditional political player walking over to his tent. He has shown no streak in him to go for a change. Never ever has he spoken of land reforms or land redistribution to liberate the huge lot of peasantry living in the suppressive serfdom of exploitative and oppressive landed aristocrats. Not even has he made this part of the economic agenda he has announced recently. Nor has ever made mention of the emancipation of the extremely promising and talented Baloch youths struggling to get out of the enslavement of unshakably-embedded sardars and chieftains who behave as if they have the divine right to keep the Baloch commoners in their perpetual slavery. Little wonder, then, hoi polloi across the spectrum are no part of this silly cacophony. Nowhere are they huddling or crowding any street corners to talk of the upcoming election. For these din-makers, the impending poll may be an event; after all, they are after the booties and bounties of the power lustily and hungrily. But for the masses, the coming election is just a non-event when it promises that it is only the elites that will once again rule and reign over them to the complete disinterest in their good and wellbeing. So, they are not talking elections when these promise not a commoner like Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Manmohan Singh will emerge to lead them and their country to progress and advancement. But it will be a Zardari, a Mian, a Gilani, a nawab, a jaghirdar or a robber baron sitting on their thin necks to belabour them. So, they give a damn to what the sages say about frequent elections throwing out the rotten eggs and ushering in sincere and public-spirited leaders. Their practical experiences tell them that the sages are plainly lying, only indulging slyly in their pep talk to burnish their spurious credentials of being wise men. And they give too hoots to the bickering going on between the political players over the interim government to hold free, fair and transparent elections. The masses know for a fact that whether foul or fair, the elections will throw up the same elite group to divvy up the power pie amongst itself, leaving them high and dry to nurse their grievances unattended and all alone, as now. Presently, they are going through hell. Neither their lives are secure, nor do they have the means to live a livable life. Yet the political players are hardly pushed about their painful woes. They are engrossed wholly in their own power games. Verily, for its own shenanigans the political class has forfeited for all times the people’s all trust. They distrust it; they abhor it, and they hold it in deep scorn. And they know for a fact that it would once again foist on them a plutocracy, not a democracy, whose meaning this class even doesn’t know. So, why should they become part of any silly cacophony of this class? And part they actually are not. The partisans are playing their symphony in a void, with no listeners at all on the street. What a pity!