Petty politics

One-third of Pakistan lies submerged under water as more than 33 million people become the direct victims of the worst disaster to have hit Pakistan in recent times. In economic terms, the floods have caused economic damages worth $10 billion to $12.5 billion to the country. None of these numbers are in any way comforting, and yet the country stands bitterly divided along political lines. One would have hoped that even in times of bitter divides such as these days, at least in a moment of extreme crisis like natural calamities or war or disaster, Pakistan would stand united. Unfortunately, that memo seems to have not reached our political class, especially a former prime minister hell bent on using the most divisive rhetoric to get back power. Apart from his fund-raising telethon and a few visits to flood-affected areas, PTI Chairman Imran Khan seems far more interested in holding jalsas so that he can continue to pressurize the government into holding early elections.

It should not have to be spelt out that a country that is virtually reeling from the chaos unleashed by climate-change induced floods, with no end to the rain and prediction of another spell cannot hold elections just because one leader has decreed it so. Economically too the country is still not out of the woods, at least as far as the effects of inflation go. The IMF tranche may have won us some breathing space but there will be more price hikes in the coming months. To expect some sanity and pause from our politicians is not an unjust demand but it seems that there will be no respite from politics. Sheikh Rasheed has announced that there will be a march to Islamabad once the floods recede. So if the floods recede, does it mean that it is the end of floods and everything is back to normal for the flood victims? We are barely in the first phase of relief and rescue operations. The second phase of rehabilitation and resettlement/relocation is still far ahead and will take years given the high number of flood affectees.

Over the past few months, the PTI chief’s line of politics has been increasingly dangerous: targeting political rivals, egging on charged supporters, dragging in state institutions. When a besieged-by-disaster and shaken-by-economic-crises government can barely keep it together in any case, facing a formidably populist burn-all-bridges Imran will hardly help focus on what is important at the moment – flood relief. Back on his jalsa trail, Imran has now floated yet another angle to his narrative – that the PDM government wants to bring in a new army chief who will be their ‘favourite’.Imran seems to wish to make everything and everyone controversial if things don’t go in his favour. If a judgment is in PTI’s favour, it is good. If not, then the judiciary is compromised. The Election Commission was fine in 2018 when every other party cried foul but it became bad after the Daska elections and due to the foreign funding case. If Nawaz was disqualified for life on a technicality, it was something to celebrate but if a technical knockout is used for Khan, the judges will have nowhere to hide. Such is the messaging by the PTI leadership –and such is Imran’s confidence that only he is the one who can get away withholding political rallies with such messages on a regular basis during a national emergency. Pakistan will take years to recover from these floods but the discourse unleashed by the PTI may take decades to deconstruct.