#Pakistan - Ignorant people and enlightened #PTI

PTI (Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf) has held Pakistan’s people responsible for the spread of the coronavirus, absolving the government of all responsibility. Yet the way Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said the people of Lahore were unique, because they were so ignorant, really crossed all lines of responsibility. True, people have not behaved responsibly at all during this crisis and openly flouted all rules pertaining to social distancing and avoiding unnecessary travel. But that is why governments must shoulder that much more responsibility, especially in times of crisis. And it’s not as if Lahore’s people became so “ignorant” just as the coronavirus came. Dr Yasmin is herself a Lahori, and understood the nature of the people all too well when she contested the election, so why is she so surprised at the way people are behaving now?

The truth is that PTI has always blamed others for its own failures. The bad economy is PML-N’s fault, the steel mills’ collapse is PPP’s fault, and the spread of the coronavirus is the people’s own fault. Perhaps party leaders should have been more mindful of facts when they were framing their policy for the pandemic. The virus actually spread because the PTI government simply refused to accept the necessity of a lockdown when the time was right. And if people did not follow safety protocols on their own, was it not the government’s responsibility to force them; as many countries in the world have done in the larger national interest? And who really is to blame if the government of the day does not really understand the attitude of the people? After all, it’s not as if PTI bigwigs were contesting the election of some advanced, enlightened country. Surely they should not need to be reminded that Pakistan is among the poorest countries in the world, with a very high population and very low literacy rate.

Wrong as blaming the people for the government’s faults is, it also means that the ruling party does not have much of a plan about the way forward? It has decided to implement targeted lockdowns, the results will come out in the next fortnight, but these measures have caused more confusion and commotion than certainty.

And even if some markets are locked down in some areas, what is to stop infected people from those areas to visit markets in other places and spread the virus that much further? And who will the party hold responsible if this plan also doesn’t quite work out?.