These are cruel times for the politically mercurial. Cruel times for people who change their stance on a particular issue about which they had passionately expressed their views in the past. But crueler still for those who change their political parties.
And that is not completely fair. Many politicians have good reason to change their parties during the course of their careers. In Pakistan, the turncoats hide behind the towering example of the founder of the nation, citing his stint at the Congress. And it is true, many politicians do genuinely feel that the parties that they were hitherto members of were no longer what they were. Or the parties might have stayed the course, but the politicians themselves had evolved out of a particular ideology. The former Jamat-e-Islami chief Munawwar Hassan – whose refreshingly honest disclosures of the party’s point of view are still requiring immense damage control by the party’s spindoctors – used to be a member of the leftist NSF in his youth. Similarly, many from the other side of the divide jumped ship to join the liberals.
In the United States, for instance, the polarities of the two main political parties flipped somewhere in the middle of the last century. The white supremacists used to support the Democrats, a stark contrast from now, where it is the Republican Party that the likes of the Klan votes for. The infamous Republican Senator Strom Thurmond was not merely a member of the Democratic Party, but he also actually ran for President on its ticket in 1948. Though he is to be blamed for a number of things, switching sides for political expediency would not be cited as one of them, because his party itself evolved, as did its rival, while he remained what he was.
To recap: if the party changes, or your own policy argument changes, then you can sort of get away with changing lanes.
The problem arises when personal accusations have been made in the rough and tumble of politicking. When the ideology is not as much in the firing line as is the personal character and integrity of the other man, there can be little by way of justification of joining his party.
Matters are compounded by the fact that in the age of the internet, statements made in the heat of the moment can come back to haunt. They did for Marvi Memon. They did for Fawad Chaudhry. And they are, now, for the PTI’s newest entry, Noor Alam Khan, formerly of the PPP.
The Peshawar PPP stalwart is rough around the edges and shoots from the hip. The man isn’t crafty and is an immediately likeable fellow. And his constituents certainly do dote on the fellow.
That friendly candour, coupled with an emotional disposition lent itself to a lot of rabble rousing on Twitter. Immediately realising the embarrassing nature of his previous tweets, the man has deleted most of them. The shizzaday on the internet, however, were a couple of steps ahead of him, and took screenshots of the said tweets, which you can read here.
The best line on the matter has been delivered by the grossly underrated satirical twitter account Broken News, who said,
“Party toh badli ja sakti hai lekin puranai tweet Bhutto ki tarah zinda reh jaate hain, Noor Alam Khan.”
