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Tuesday March 19, 2024

In the name of the people

By Kamila Hyat
August 17, 2017

The people are handy beings. They can be called upon and spoken for by any political party whenever the need arises. When they are not needed, they simply remain in their tiny hovels, makeshift shacks and dilapidated homes, struggling to provide for their families and to find a means to educate their children.

But it is in the people’s name that political parties speak. Leaders inevitably claim that they are acting in their interest and for their sake. We are told that the people want a specific scenario or support a particular government. Yes, when elections are held they do express what they want through their votes. But their choices are limited in a scenario where ideological diversity is non-existent and voters have recognised that they must opt for whichever candidate promises them the most in the run-up to the elections, which is the only time when they become significant.

Already, communities are gathering across the country to determine what they will seek from candidates: water, sanitation, a school or something similar. They know that in the period between elections, nothing substantial will happen to deliver the basic necessities to them. The role of the government, it appears, is not to serve the people or to provide the bare essentials to them. The people must speak for themselves and find ways to acquire what they need whenever they can and the period ahead of the balloting process is always an extremely important time.

The people also seem to exist as a single mass entity. They are the mass that is used when the requirement arises. There appears to be no remorse when one of their members – even if that is a child – is mowed down by a passing cavalcade.

Their sense of dignity is also weakened by the notes hurled out at them in the hope of gathering larger crowds. During the previous elections, currency notes have been handed out in envelopes as a means to collect votes. Many in the country are canny enough to collect the envelopes and then vote as they choose. Politicians do not appear to realise that people are not as easily bribable as they think.

It is significant that in our country, people are barely spoken about at all during the long intervals when they are not required. Our media ‘breaks’ only the sensational story – the story of rape, murder, abduction and other calamities. The day-to-day disasters that people live through are left unmentioned and are consequently unknown. Only a few of us recognise the kind of life that the majority leads.

An astonishing number of Pakistanis still deny that there are people starving in their country even though global indices suggest that the levels of food deprivation are as acute as those in Sub-Saharan Africa. The stark figures from Unicef, which tell us that 50 percent of children in the country are stunted due to malnutrition, provide ample evidence of this. But of course, such realities are not worthy of being declared news. They simply involve the lives of people and are, therefore, of no importance to anyone who matters.

From time to time, we hear the argument that people who are illiterate cannot correctly use their vote. This argument has been put forward for decades. It makes no sense at all as people know precisely what they need. They know that they do not need banknotes hurled out at them from passing luxury cars. They know that they do not need callous leaders whose security protocols results in children dying because they are unable to reach hospital. They do not need leaders who speak of them only as a kind of distant, abstract reality that can be referred to as a means to defend their own actions and protect their own self interests.

Just the manner in which people gather at rallies or go out to vote suggests that they resemble something akin to cattle – herded into trucks, provided food to keep them happy and then often dumped at ballot stations once they have delivered and placed their piece of paper into the box. After this exercise, they no longer matter. Many are left to make their own way home on foot or on whatever means of transport they can find.

Despite these handicaps, frequent elections are, in some ways, a boon for people. It is the only time that they gain attention and some priority for their problems. Solving these problems is essentially a way to purchase their votes. It is the political parties who need to think if such an unstable, unreliable political system, which is based on an essential flaw in terms of recognising where people stand in the country, is viable.

At some point, rulers need to persuade themselves that people need to be taken care of, not only as a mechanism to use during poll time or when trouble arises but as a means to strengthen the country as a whole by building the power, capacity and potential of the people. While this may seem like an idealistic notion, it is surely what political parties are all about or what they should be endeavouring to do.

Instead, we have multiple cases where people do not see the candidates they have elected for months or even years in their home constituencies. It is essentially up to the political parties to amend this. Even the structures that once existed within, for example, the PPP in its early days when party offices were established in neighbourhoods everywhere, have vanished. The deterioration of the political parties is a disturbing factor and has aided the rise of other powers within the country that can threaten them and essentially hold power in their own hands.

Parliament is, in many ways, simply an illusion. It serves little real purpose. Yes, laws are passed. In 2016, many more bills were passed than the average for the past five years. But many of these laws simply do not turn into anything of meaning for the people. Even so, the fact that they exist can be important. The nature of law-making is significant. But parliament also has to show that it has force beyond this and backing the people is a vital part in ensuring this.

Ideally, the people themselves need to rise against the practice of using them to simply serve specific self-interests. But they need to be organised as a force to achieve this. The loss of labour unions, student unions and other bodies representing citizens has harmed their capacity to do so.

The political parties that still function are top-heavy and dominated by dynastic leaderships but have less grassroots level organisation. Local governments should be handed far more power.

But this, of course, does not suit sitting governments or those who currently wield authority. Right now, we are once again seeing almost every party naming ‘the people’ as those they need to serve and who they speak for. The people themselves do not believe this. Even the simplest of surveys demonstrates their true feelings. Unfortunately, parties have found ways to circumvent the real backing from the people rather than develop this base of support. This is the basic weakness of our system. People are simply tools within it rather than powerful players who should dominate the chessboard.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.