IK is still on the pitch

Primary role of the legislators is to do legislation and at ours, legislation is the only thing they don’t do. 5 February Kashmir Day was on Tuesday and a little tweak of legislation could have shifted this holiday on Monday the 4^th February. Nobody wants to work on a lone working Monday sandwiched between a weekend and a gazette holiday. Consequently, Monday became a burden on people to go to work. It cost national exchequer full day’s work as most of the public/ private offices and educational institutions had least attendance and people had to make new and old excuses to take the day off. Whereas, had Monday been off; people would have gotten a long weekend and on Tuesday, they could have come fresh for work, saving one day of work/ financial loss to a nation begging money from others to payback interest on its debts. Developed countries do such legislations and that is probably why they are developed and we are not.

Unfortunately, legislation is not likely to happen in current govt’s tenure. Besides omniscient issues of lethargy and incompetence, reason is simple, ruling party doesn’t have majority in both Houses to affect any legislation. Willy-nilly, Govt has opted for Ordinance based change but the fruition of the same may take minimum three years to show. In order to divert peoples’ attention from real issue of Economy, Govt needs to keep the opposition and the people embroiled in non-issues.  Hence, in an organized way, BigMouthPieces latched on the opposition on past corruption and poor governance. Opposition is very limited on options. Its leadership is more occupied on corruption cases and lack of medical and other facilities in jail than the real issues. They cannot mobilize masses, nor do they have moral locus standi for it. They are totally immersed in media and parliament rhetorical slugfest, playing right in to the hands of govt’s game plan for next three years. Parliament in this regard is a burden on national treasury for the whole length of the current term.

Can govt show some results in fourth year in office? It’s a tricky question. IK has set some lofty goals to achieve. And there is nothing wrong with setting the bar high because not failure, but low aim is a crime. But Team PTI for greater part is a collection of past waste of opposition parties. People like Murad Saeed have had made some ridiculous claims of overnight economic recovery. Sarwar Khan has no acumen of energy sector and current gas crisis seems to be the beginning of bigger energy related crises in times to come. CM Punjab is dubbed to match the flare and guile of Waseem Akram; a practical joke of proportions. So much can be written on the subject but for a short blog entry, we can conclude that Team PTI is the chink in IK’s armour. Obviously, this team cannot achieve the goals set forth by IK but how short it falls of the mark, remains to be seen.

Yet, hope is the fuel of life. IK is still on the pitch. Most definitely, things have already changed. Ministers and party workers of PTI are also involved in corruption but they do it underhand with the fear of consequences. In past, ministers did corruption audaciously, Rana Mashhood took bribe on camera and is still the senior member of PML (N). At least, such shameless corruption is on the hold. Even bureaucracy and other officials are being cautious these days. Bribery is no more a norm rather a risk.

Another sibling of corruption which has been bleeding us for a while now, is extremism. Unchecked religious extremism is the root cause of our internal security issues. Somehow, monster of religious extremism successfully used its ‘leverage’ against past govts. But the handling to TLP and Asia Bibi case has been highly commendable. We need to check all types of extremist tendencies including the other end of the extremist spectrum i.e. liberal extremism.  

For the first six months in office, for its political and media strategy, Govt is the winner. However, it may keep people occupied in pointless TV and Parliament bickering with the opposition, it has to show some tangible results by the end of the term. Although, it cannot deliver its promise for weakness of team and loftiness of targets yet the funny part is that however short it may fall of its targets, PTI will get another term which may include Sindh as well.

Now that corruption and extremism is checked and IK is still on the pitch, there is a thin silver lining on the horizon.

Only Allah knows the whole Truth.