Healing touch
The beauty of democracy is its ability to embrace conflicting opinions, make adjustments for all participating parties, and work together for the betterment of the people. Over the years, intolerance in Pakistan has reached unprecedented levels. Party leaders and their supporters enjoy attacking their rivals, and any talks of reconciliation with rival parties are shot down.
This has polarized our society to dangerous levels. In this regard, recent statements by the PML-N, PPP and JUI-F feel like the beginning of a new, more tolerant inning in Pakistani politics. All political parties have said that they will not celebrate PTI founder Imran Khan’s sentence. They have also said that they don’t believe in politics of vendetta. JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said that there will be no joy in the upcoming elections without the PTI founder and that he will not say anything about his political opponent who is in jail. It must be commended that the PML-N, the PPP, and even the JUI-F – who have all been on the receiving end of the worst kind of political diatribes, vicious attacks and victimisation at the hands of the PTI and Imran Khan – are publicly taking a stand that they find no satisfaction in seeing a fellow politician’s incarceration.
Pakistan needs a healing touch – especially in the political arena. We have witnessed the politics of the late 1980s and 1990s, but once Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto signed the Charter of Democracy (CoD) and buried old enmity, the people of Pakistan were given a break from political vendettas. Unfortunately, it was only after Imran Khan joined the political arena and Project Imran was launched to undermine CoD and political camaraderie that we saw some of the worst sort of politics in the last decade or so. Politicians and political experts had been cautioning Khan against going to a point from where there was no turning back. Politics is all about the art of tolerance and opposing your opponents without turning it into personal enmity. Politics is not about vendettas or settling scores. It is about providing a healing touch to society. The past decade’s polarization has damaged our society, media, politics, and judiciary, among others. It has damaged our institutions.
The upcoming elections are already quite controversial. It is important that political parties demand that their opponents are given equal opportunity and a level playing field. After the elections, it will be extremely important that all political parties use parliament as a forum to address these issues. We have heard many politicians talk about a truth and reconciliation commission. Political parties have a responsibility to ensure that such a commission is set up, and if it is not possible, they should at least use parliament to make some rules of the game. Politicians can oppose each other on policies without getting personal. We need a new charter of democracy with the PTI as a signatory; we also need a charter of economy and we definitely need a charter of human rights. We have seen countries progress economically despite crushing political dissent but without fundamental and human rights, no country can claim that it has a true democratic setup. Pakistan has seen a prime minister hanged, a former prime minister assassinated, prime ministers going to jail on trumped up charges, no prime minister completing his/her tenure. This needs to change. Pakistan as a whole needs stability, a just judicial system, a government that is accountable, a robust civil society and a free media.
