SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
FOR as long as there has been politics, there have been politicians willing to indulge in the business of slander, mudslinging and worse. Pakistan has been no exception.
Over the decades, there have been many politicians and political operatives who have said and done ugly things, sometimes coming to regret them later, often remaining unapologetic.
But perhaps there have been few who have indulged in accusations and recriminations as wantonly as Altaf Hussain and Imran Khan, and their respective parties have done against each other.
Sadly, another round appears to have erupted as the mercurial MQM chief and the shoot-from-the-hip PTI supremo tear into each other and each other’s politics for the umpteenth time.
Many of the allegations are old, some new, but together they amount to another sorry episode in politics here. For, despite Mr Hussain’s apology to PTI ’s women supporters, the MQM chief and the PTI leader are tarnishing the very image of politics itself.
It is not so much what the two leaders, and their eager courtiers, have been saying but the context itself. To be political rivals, even sworn enemies, is one thing — there can be little expectation either side would pull their punches in that environment. But the two parties appear to want the nation to forget that their relationship is less a continuous downward spiral and more a rollercoaster.
At various occasions, both sides have sought each other’s help, have allied with each other and provided political cover to each other.
It seems the MQM and PTI want to be each other’s political enemies when beneficial and quietly revert to a semblance of friendship when more convenient.
Could there be a more cynical kind of politics than that? It is not hard to imagine that days or weeks from now, the two parties’ leadership will be exchanging smiles, handshakes and even hugs, the vitriol, vile accusations and uncouth behaviour forgotten — until the next time.
Perhaps the greater problem here is not the faux war of words between the two but, as ever, how that taints the public’s perception of politics, the political process and democracy itself.
The partisanship does not rankle so much as the utter hypocrisy of what is on display. Pakistan has urgent, serious problems to attend to. Karachi is a city that has been mauled by yet another period of strife and conflict.
The MQM and PTI are both navigating an uncertain period in their immediate political futures. How does any of what is on display in recent days help any of that?
To expect the public to be conveniently distracted, to expect the people to fall for ratings-hungry plotlines of the electronic media, to expect that the citizenry will simply accept the theatrics on display is perhaps to expect too much.
The question, as ever, is what happens when the people tire of politicians?
pakistan.shafaqna.com
