As the time is running out fast, the new incumbents in power are trailing far behind to the great consternation and concern of the masses. They had held out tall promises to the electorate and had also promised to deliver on them quickly. Of course, that was patently electoral politics, with the contestants irrationally but alluringly promising competitively to the electorate the moon for gains on the ballot box.
But rational or irrational, with that ploy they had raised the people's expectations abnormally high, who now want them to make good on what they had promised, which candidly is impossible in the given conditions. The incumbents' plea, even as absolutely true, that they have inherited a huge mess which would take time to clear up, is not carrying any much conviction with the masses. They have specific questions and only specific answers can satisfy them. And, appallingly, those answers are not coming forth from the incumbents. And this quietude of theirs is very disquieting, to say the least.
The PML (N) hierarchs had come crowing that they would get into grips with tortuous load-shedding powerfully and the masses would feel the change not in months or weeks but within days. They gave the sense that with clearing the vicious circular debt they would considerably slash it down. And now the people are intrigued and miffed. They can't understand why has there been no lessening in load-shedding even when the PML (N)-led federal government has paid up a huge chunk of that debt, and it instead is aggravating.
Nobody is bothering to tell them. Not even the power minister, who in effect appears to have just disappeared from the scene altogether. The word is long out from the party and government quarters that it is the prime minister who would in due course unveil his administration's energy policy. So be it. But that doesn't preclude any one else from answering a question troubling the public mind. Unarguably, unveiling an energy policy is a matter altogether different from answering a perplexing question bamboozling the people. And it doesn't have to be the prime minister to answer that puzzling question. The power minister should do it. Indeed, leave alone the minister, even a senior mandarin of the power ministry could have done it.
But none over there has deemed fit to assuage the boiling public disquiet on this score, realising not the baneful consequences of this quietude. As indeed has the PPP government in Sindh fretted not to tell the people as to why it is as yet failing again to curb violence and bloodshed in the province's metropolis of Karachi. The party couldn't be unaware that apart from load-shedding, it is the bloodbath of Karachi on its previous watch in Sindh that had largely cost it the 2013 election so unbearably humiliatingly. From a national party, it has been indefensibly reduced just into a regional party.
And had Sindh interior still not been under the sway of overbearing feudal lords and land barons, the party could have been possibly swept out from the political centre-stage altogether. Yet the PPP government is mum as to why the key port city of the nation is still in flames. Is it for its lack of trying, as on its previous watch? Or is it for reasons beyond its control? Of necessity, it has to come clean on the issue. But it is puritanically keeping quiet, wholly ignorant of the intense public sentiment to know this as well as of the tremendous dent its already-deeply besmirched public image is receiving because of this stupefying muteness.
The incumbents across the spectrum must know this. They have come promising moon to an impatient public dealt an atrociously raw deal by the previous rulers over their long, long five-year tenure.
This terribly-wronged public has no patience to wait for the whole lot of goodies promised to them. Since those promises as yet remain just that, a disturbing public unease and restlessness is setting in that potentially could ultimately flare up into something wholly undesirable.
Hence, the incumbents must take the questions taxing the public mind very seriously and answer them promptly to set the mass of the people at ease.
They must increase their truck with the media and speak out in press conferences, exclusive interviews and press meets frequently to answer those troubling questions.
Their existing nonchalance on this count is very dismaying, and baneful too.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Pakistan: Disquieting quietude
As the time is running out fast, the new incumbents in power are trailing far behind to the great consternation and concern of the masses. They had held out tall promises to the electorate and had also promised to deliver on them quickly. Of course, that was patently electoral politics, with the contestants irrationally but alluringly promising competitively to the electorate the moon for gains on the ballot box.
But rational or irrational, with that ploy they had raised the people's expectations abnormally high, who now want them to make good on what they had promised, which candidly is impossible in the given conditions. The incumbents' plea, even as absolutely true, that they have inherited a huge mess which would take time to clear up, is not carrying any much conviction with the masses. They have specific questions and only specific answers can satisfy them. And, appallingly, those answers are not coming forth from the incumbents. And this quietude of theirs is very disquieting, to say the least.
The PML (N) hierarchs had come crowing that they would get into grips with tortuous load-shedding powerfully and the masses would feel the change not in months or weeks but within days. They gave the sense that with clearing the vicious circular debt they would considerably slash it down. And now the people are intrigued and miffed. They can't understand why has there been no lessening in load-shedding even when the PML (N)-led federal government has paid up a huge chunk of that debt, and it instead is aggravating.
Nobody is bothering to tell them. Not even the power minister, who in effect appears to have just disappeared from the scene altogether. The word is long out from the party and government quarters that it is the prime minister who would in due course unveil his administration's energy policy. So be it. But that doesn't preclude any one else from answering a question troubling the public mind. Unarguably, unveiling an energy policy is a matter altogether different from answering a perplexing question bamboozling the people. And it doesn't have to be the prime minister to answer that puzzling question. The power minister should do it. Indeed, leave alone the minister, even a senior mandarin of the power ministry could have done it.
But none over there has deemed fit to assuage the boiling public disquiet on this score, realising not the baneful consequences of this quietude. As indeed has the PPP government in Sindh fretted not to tell the people as to why it is as yet failing again to curb violence and bloodshed in the province's metropolis of Karachi. The party couldn't be unaware that apart from load-shedding, it is the bloodbath of Karachi on its previous watch in Sindh that had largely cost it the 2013 election so unbearably humiliatingly. From a national party, it has been indefensibly reduced just into a regional party.
And had Sindh interior still not been under the sway of overbearing feudal lords and land barons, the party could have been possibly swept out from the political centre-stage altogether. Yet the PPP government is mum as to why the key port city of the nation is still in flames. Is it for its lack of trying, as on its previous watch? Or is it for reasons beyond its control? Of necessity, it has to come clean on the issue. But it is puritanically keeping quiet, wholly ignorant of the intense public sentiment to know this as well as of the tremendous dent its already-deeply besmirched public image is receiving because of this stupefying muteness.
The incumbents across the spectrum must know this. They have come promising moon to an impatient public dealt an atrociously raw deal by the previous rulers over their long, long five-year tenure.
This terribly-wronged public has no patience to wait for the whole lot of goodies promised to them. Since those promises as yet remain just that, a disturbing public unease and restlessness is setting in that potentially could ultimately flare up into something wholly undesirable.
Hence, the incumbents must take the questions taxing the public mind very seriously and answer them promptly to set the mass of the people at ease.
They must increase their truck with the media and speak out in press conferences, exclusive interviews and press meets frequently to answer those troubling questions.
Their existing nonchalance on this count is very dismaying, and baneful too.
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