Once a lota, always a lota
March 13, 2009
It's unbelievable that the Q League has emerged today as the party most sought-after both by the PPP and the PML-N. Only a year ago, it was a party people loved to hate. They called it variously Quisling League, Qainchi League, Qahat League, or Qatil League, titles pretty much descriptive of the perceived character of this party.
This was primarily a party of turncoats, or lotas, as they are called, who had ditched their respective parent parties, on whose tickets they were elected, to form a government under General Musharraf. Its leaders were object of ridicule. People loved to watch them being humiliated and made fun of on TV shows. When they got an opportunity, on February 18, 2008, the people trashed these turncoats and consigned them, they thought, to the dustbin of politics for at least five years. But this was not to be.
Today, the Q-leaguers are once again the most sought-after commodity. Not because the people had a change of heart or the party has undergone some sort of transformation, but because the PPP and the PML-N need them in the now familiar, but disgusting, number-game they have just initiated in Punjab. They seem to have forgotten the basic lesson of Pakistani politics: once a lota always a lota.
Aziz Akhmad
Islamabad
This was primarily a party of turncoats, or lotas, as they are called, who had ditched their respective parent parties, on whose tickets they were elected, to form a government under General Musharraf. Its leaders were object of ridicule. People loved to watch them being humiliated and made fun of on TV shows. When they got an opportunity, on February 18, 2008, the people trashed these turncoats and consigned them, they thought, to the dustbin of politics for at least five years. But this was not to be.
Today, the Q-leaguers are once again the most sought-after commodity. Not because the people had a change of heart or the party has undergone some sort of transformation, but because the PPP and the PML-N need them in the now familiar, but disgusting, number-game they have just initiated in Punjab. They seem to have forgotten the basic lesson of Pakistani politics: once a lota always a lota.
Aziz Akhmad
Islamabad
