Fever pitch?

Too soon, too vacuous

Though the decorum of Pakistani politics has never quite been the graduating ceremony of a ladies’ finishing school, the barbs are really flying all over the place at the moment. The salvo that started the current spat was the incendiary speech of the president at the death anniversary of ZA Bhutto at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh. Never one for respecting the decorum that comes with being a non-political symbol of the federation, he let it rip at the Sharifs’ expense. Some crass remarks about the brothers being outsiders who migrated to Lahore (as if nativism and neo-nativism were too good a phenomenon to restrict to Karachi). He also said that the League head honchos’ sheen was his to take back, as it was given to them at his discretion. The PPP co-chairperson also made his intention clear to team up with the other League in the upcoming election and take a swing at the Punjab government.

The N-League isn’t a stickler for decorum either. It is only the president’s periodicity that might make his statements stand out in contrast to the Punjab premier’s more regular foamings at the mouth every so often about the former, always using a dreadfully interesting choice of words: lynching, dragging through the streets etc.

Members of the provincial government greeting the head of state wouldn’t really have been killing the foe with kindness: it is expected of a dignitary of the provincial government to greet him regardless of what the federal-province relation is. This was followed by leader of the opposition in the NA, Chaudhry Nisar’s diatribe against the PPP, which placed a youngster, then underaged even to cast a vote, to preside over the party.

The parties, it seems, are in election mode, with all the mudslinging sloganeering that accompanies the exercise. Since the election activity works itself into a feverish pitch, blocking all other public discourse, one wonders whether the timing – a full one year before the polls – is appropriate.

On the other side of the world, the Republican primaries are set to conclude in the US, with Mitt Romney in the lead. Now the level of debate in the GoP is laughed at within the American media establishment. But despite that, an observer from Pakistan would look with wistful envy at the fact that, though the primaries weren’t without their bit of character assassination and ad hominem attacks, the primary points of debate were actual, policy issues. Ones that were well-debated.