Pakistan: Fraught venture

It is indefensibly a fraught venture that the political class is embarked upon, which could potentially explode and end up into unforeseen unpleasant consequences. After the PTI had launched into its campaign of street protest against uncontrolled price hike, its archrival in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa JUI (F) has announced to follow suit. And while the PTI, after staging the Lahore show, has declared to carry the campaign on to Karachi and Rawalpindi, the JUI (F) wants to confront the PTI on the issue of law and order in the latter's KP fort.

Then is the nation going to be a hapless spectator of a risk-fraught competition of dharnas in the days ahead? For, predictably, sooner than later, other political players in the field would also hop on to this venture. This is the way the things have been going on in this country. And no change is going to be there this time round too. Are the issues, then, now on to be settled on the streets, and the people's problems are to be sorted out in sit-ins and street marches, not the legislative halls and official corridors?

A political class wedded to trite clichés can chant as cheekily that protests are democracy's integral part, as it does that no problem has a military solution. And just as it overlooks too many realities that cannot be ignored at all for that phenomenon's rational understanding, so does it in the instant case. Yes, a war has ultimately to end up in a political solution. But the solution is in reality the victor's-dictated surrender document for the defeated to sign up to. And peace between the state and warring militants comes about only when the state has pulverised them with a robust security action into such emasculation that they find it more expedient to talk peace than continuing fighting.

And so goes with the political class's shallow pretence about street protest. Yes, protests, marches and sit-ins are very much part of a democratic order, practised no lesser in entrenched democracies. But while street urchins could take to this "democratic" option blithely, the political class has to distinguish itself from that riff-raff by taking to this course after considering all the pros and cons thoroughly. The critical question for street campaigners is to consider if the problem in question can be wiped out simply with a street show.

If the present street campaigners are any true to their professions and intents, they indeed would conclude that the issues they are raising so much of hue and cry about are no soluble so easily. Price control is dependent on a host of administrative, economic and multifarious other factors, which until tackled effectively would retard and obstruct any reduction in prices. And no street slogans, no matter how volubly and voluminously raised, can inflict even a slight slowdown in lawlessness nor can it impart even a marginal uplift in governance.

Fighting crime is a serious matter that requires hardboiled thinking, meticulous planning, robust strategies and extremely toned-up security apparatus. None of that can be done on the street. It is the official precincts and security quarters from where all the requisites could come forth. And that holds good for refurbishing the governance as well. It is not the street but the brains and the wills that produce the means for propping up the governance to the shape to deliver to the masses to their greater gratification. Indeed, it could only be the height of political adventurism, arrogance and opportunism that instead of employing the governmental and legislative forums the street is being resorted to when most of the street campaigners have their exalted presences in the governments and also in the legislatures. It is those forums that they should use, and would indeed profitably if they do. The political class, as a whole, needs to know, which it certainly knows not, notwithstanding its pretences of keeping its hand on the people's pulse, that it is well on its way of losing the public's all trust, which already it has lost irreversibly considerably. And what is all the more alarming is that the people are losing worrisomely fast the trust in the very democratic order. A public feeling is getting currency in a whirlwind that this system has failed to deliver and deliver it would not at all so long as the entrenched political class holds the ground and calls the shots. Of course, this should alarm not just the current campaigners on the street, though. The entire political class must shudder at it. But the street campaigners must tell if it is now the street protest, not the ballot box, that henceforth has to decide who will rule in the land and how. If that is it, they have only look to some South East Asian nations to know the horror of this phenomenon. The street protests oust one government and install a new one to be in turn toppled by the street agitators of the ousted regime and make for it to stage a comeback. Just a short glimpse at present-day Thailand should suffice for the street agitators to know of this phenomenon's vagaries. Certainly, this country cannot afford such upheavals and would do well without them.