Going by the index of an egalitarian history, one doesn’t have to be a government supporter or an opponent of those who may be striving to see flawless parliamentary democracy flourishing in the country, to say that adult behavior is adult behavior and street rumpus is street rumpus.
No argument is needed to persuade any reasonable person to see that if street rumpus is imported and enacted in an august lawmaking chamber then it is out of place, it is in questionable form, and it is definitely not what one would expect genuine crusaders in the cause of genuine democracy to indulge in.
The unlovely scenes enacted inside the Punjab Legislative Assembly over the week would be beneath the level of a disorderly fish market, not to speak of an elected parliamentary institution in the country’s largest and pragmatically–a more mature province.
Whereas, local bodies at the union level have given an incomparably better account as democratic institutions than the Punjab Provincial Assembly.
One can go all the way with those who want democratic values and polity, respectfully restored to its dazzling flourish with fullness. But democracy is not some mechanism than can be fabricated in some workshop overnight then installed and switched on–to operate.
Why do apparently adult, mature and sane people find it difficult to see that the fact of our life is that we are starting on the road to democracy, after having been derailed– time n’ again.
Virtually, we are standing at the take-off point. What these agitating politicos gone wholly wrong about is that they believe democracy in Pakistan has matured and waiting only to be plucked and relished no end.
This is a starkly flawed perception of what is our standing in terms of a functioning democracy. General elections have been held as promised. Parliamentary institutions have been inaugurated.
Let them perform as proper lawmaking bodies. It is from the floor of these elected Houses that the lawmakers had better start the process of guiding the nation along the path of democracy and set in the direction of the objectives they want to be realized into sustainable political reality in the country.
One can–in no way–justify scuffles n’ skirmishes for democracy by crudely throttling the democracy that you have, to the extent you have.
Thus the best choice left is that ‘let such a movement for ‘democracy’ not uproot the sapling of a bona fide democratic rule that the present dispensation has injected into the fabulous soils of Pakistan.
Isn’t it an environ–much needed via all emblems of realism–for a democratic set-up to survive, obviously paving vistas for the affluence of the nation in meticulous–explicitly in the current [still perilous] scenario in South Asia, which no one knows as to when would evaporate?
The author is a noted journalist, political analyst and ex-Director News Pakistan TV.
