Pakistan’s Poli-tricking (Reality) Show

The political arena of Pakistan mocks all Pakistanis in their faces, for their decision of electing and giving power to all the incumbent politicians, who these days are busy showing ridiculous poli-tricking to all ordinary Pakistanis. Pakistani citizens have witnessed numerous stints of our elected politicians since the day of the first session of the incumbent parliament. This poli-tricking show is like the famous reality show, True Man Show , which is broadcasted live 24 hours a day. We, the ordinary citizens, can not escape any of its episodes, no matter wherever we go, whatever we do, and how bad are the performing politicians.

Most of the time, this live poli-tricking show also gives us a taste of Indian Soap Dramas, where various political parties would be either in some love-hate relationship or seen as playing roles of ‘Saas and Bahu’ . Audience (we, the people) can easily guess who is ‘Saas(mother-in-law)’ and who is ‘Bahu(sister-in-law)’. Let us not forget that in making this poli-tricking show a ‘reality’, ‘Establishment’ worked untiringly and provided back the stage support to all the elected cast, and also continued adding various spices and missing ingredients to it.

To recall, the very first episode of the poli-tricking show was a love-love relationship when the major political parties, for the first time in Pakistani history, formed an alliance to run this country which is now considered as one of the most dangerous state of the world. Though appreciated by the general audience, this love-love relationship was very short lived and as said and written time and again by both the print and electronic journalists, ‘came to its logical conclusion’. The bone of contention between various political actors was the issue of reinstatement of deposed judges and the repeal of the notorious 17^th Amendment.

In the next episode of this famous reality show, deposed Judges were reinstated and this action was commemorated as the ‘Independence of judiciary’. The Judiciary became so ‘independent’ that our reinstated Chief Justice had taken ‘Sou Motu Notice’ many times including that of the National Reconciliation Ordinance. The much ‘applauded’ step of our Herculean Chief Justice was of making the National Reconciliation Ordinance null and void.

The Chief Justice also had a tough wrestling match with the presidency on the issue of appointment of judges, which by the grace of Establishment and the PML-N was won again by our Herculean Chief Justice and ‘independent’ judiciary. Till-to-date, the Chief Justice has got his own ‘wanted’ judges appointed to the Supreme Court and yes as goes the saying ‘ Judiciary is more Independent now as compared to the past in the history of Pakistan’. But ironically, despite its touted ‘independence’ the judiciary has not yet been able to clear the backlog and pending cases, consequently, ordinary citizens are still denied the due ‘justice’. But, it does not matter if the judiciary is inept and lazy but let us not forget that it is ‘Independent’.

And coming to the current episode, the political stage is all set for the ‘Constitutional Reforms’ package. Besides, our two heroes, General Ashfaq Kiyani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, have recently been to Uncle Sam’s land for playing a ‘strategic dialogue’ with their shopping basket / wish list in their hands. Though our heroes have returned back home with a few carrots but how many sticks they have received is yet to be seen. In the next episode of ‘strategic dialogue, game play will be resumed again in coming months in Islamabad (perhaps not from the very beginning).

Nevertheless, the current episode is equally entertaining with ‘Constitutional Reforms’ taking a new twist. When a couple of days back, Nawaz Sharif of PML-N in one of his (foolish) stunts , has surprised everyone by expressing his reservations on the Constitutional Reforms package prepared by the Raza Rabbani’s Constitutional Reforms Committee. The hallmark of Nawaz Sharif’s action was two hurriedly called press conferences to express his ‘principled stand’ and show his love for ‘democracy’.

But throughout this whole two years poli-tricking show, the general audiences were comfortably numbed by the suicide blasts, the electricity and water shortage and the rising food prices. We, the people still do not know the future of this ‘reality show’ as some ‘hidden hand’ is busy in planning and staging the next episode for us. Yet, this reality show has confirmed the notion that ‘democracy is the best revenge’ and all the political actors of our reality show are busy taking revenge from each other in their own defined ‘(un)democratic way’.