Anybody remember the people?
So, the prime minister will have none of the opposition’s antics; not after the letter to the CJ. But the CJ will have none of the PM’s ToRs. That definitively swings the pendulum in favour of the opposition. Now there’ll have to be some sort of negotiations for some semblance of middle ground, no doubt. Some say that’s just what the PM will do Monday, to take the sting out of the opposition. But there’s a problem there too, of course. The opposition is hardly a house united. That PTI wants the jugular is as old as the dharna. PPP, on the other hand, is torn. There’s the typical Zardari style balancing still to do, it seems, between remembering the Dr Asim, etc, insult and protecting the ‘system’, like the dharna days.
Then there’s all this chatter about the army chief knocking on the PM’s door for a specific purpose – clean up the Panama mess, that is. These developments have given rise to a number of assumptions on prime time media. There’s a lot of bad blood between the government and the opposition, for one. PPP is done with the ‘saving democracy’ thing; especially since PML-N left it hung out to dry in Karachi. That, on top of PTI pressure, means darker days ahead for the government. Then there are cleavages within the opposition, deepening the political paralysis. And, of course, there are always hints of civ-mil imbalance.
Ironically, in this back-and-forth between the government, opposition and the brass – the serving and aspiring servants of the people – there is no mention of the common man. When the government is fighting for its life, and the opposition is out for its neck, and the military is fighting an existential war, the people naturally suffer. These politicians can knock themselves out fighting to save democracy, but unless the lot of the people improves, their own survival will be in jeopardy. After all, one of the features of democracy is that people can, at the end of the day, have their voices heard.
