- PPP’s Mochi Gate rhetoric a rose-tinted retreat from reality
The small, historic ground that hosted political luminaries and fostered anti-government movements in its heyday, was the symbolical site chosen for the PPP’s February 5 rally intended to restore its tattered Punjab electoral fortunes and mock the wounded PML-N lion, licking its legal wounds, within its own den. The occasion was Kashmir Day, when solidarity and moral support is pledged to Indian–occupied brethren, and politicians pitch in with some lip service, despite Maulana Fazlur Rehman chairing the Kashmir Committee, a square peg indeed. Even so, the Punjab chief minister, duly hatted, felt obliged to scoot off to Kasur no doubt in the conviction that Lahore was not big enough for both himself and Asif Zardari, while Punjab Assembly’s special session was attended by reportedly just 45 out of 371 legislators.
Our political elite, though apparently congenitally lacking in nation-building qualities, are distinguished in one aspect, they are all leaders of the Big Mouth, speaking loudly but carrying an extremely small stick to back up their hyperbole. So with the PPP leader who promised ‘jiyalas’ a comprehensive victory in the 2018 elections, winning from ‘KP, Sindh, Balochistan and even Punjab’, and in the Senate, adding on a rather modest note that he had fulfilled all past promises. Turning the Zardari heavy artillery on PML-N and disqualified Nawaz Sharif, the PPP leader vowed no quarter to the latter, labelling him a ‘national thief’, who stole the PPP mandate in 2013 and exploited national resources to usurp people’s rights, while holding out the mouth-watering prospect of an alternate political dynasty, starring himself, Bilawal and Aseefa! Ousting the PML-N from power was the thrust of PPP’s Kashmir Day rally, while over in Muzaffarabad, Nawaz Sharif, precariously clinging to the party president post at court discretion, was singing his own shrill ‘songs of innocence’ while denouncing superior judiciary, seemingly oblivious of grim judicial realities. While one can admire the sheer gall and chutzpah of Zardari, Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif, they should rather be thinking of electoral party alliances, instead of being provocative, dogmatic and aggressive. Beware the perils of adrenaline excess.
