Left with excuses It was first President Asif Zardari, also the co-chair of the...

Left with excuses

It was first President Asif Zardari, also the co-chair of the Pakistan People's Party. He said certain national and international forces had conspired for his party's electoral humiliation. And it is now the Awami National Party's provincial president, Senator Afrasiab Khattak. He too has blamed foreign forces for his party's electoral debacle. But how can they hope to bury their heads in such lewd and ludicrous excuses? In the election, it is the people of Pakistan that cast their votes, not any aliens. And it is none else but the Pakistani electorate that slapped such a shameful defeat on the faces of these two parties.
Of course, it requires tremendous manliness and greatness to accept defeat. But what is the harm if these two parties call a spade a spade to their own ultimate good and admit frankly that they had failed spectacularly in serving the people and delivering even their basic needs? When in rule, neither gave the sense that they had to go to the people yet again to seek their fresh mandate and the people would adjudge them for their performance, not for their promises or slogans. And for performance, they had hardly anything splendid or breathtaking on their slates to show. These were all splattered with gloom.
The ANP had indeed an opportunity of lifetime to show the mettle in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and earn lasting repute for good governance, clean administration and development and progress. For a generous share in federal divisible pool and hefty arrears in power royalty pouring into the provincial kitty, and for a slumbering coalition partner in the PPP, the ANP had all to transform the province's landscape into a charming spectacle of functional public services, waterworks, power grids, green farms and bustling factories. A role model to envy it could have become. But in power it earned the name for every infamy, be it corruption or misuse of office, be it patronage or cronyism, be it incompetence or ineptitude, be it the slaughter of merit to reward the favourites.
As with the PPP, at the roots of ANP's grand failure in the province was its penchant to promote the dynasty culture in the party. For the difficult condition the province was caught up in when the party took over, it required indispensably a very seasoned, mature and experienced hand to lead the provincial administration. And the party suffered from no lack of such hands. Yet the party slavishly fell in to select for this top post an absolutely immature and inexperienced youngster whose only merit was his close kinship with party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan. No wonder, the ANP turned out such a horrible damp squib in power to be dealt such a severe drubbing at the ballot box by the electorate.
Of course, the ANP entered the ring with an awful handicap. Together with the PPP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), it was on the hit-list of the TTP militants. And it too was attacked by the terrorists again and again all through the hustings, forcing it down to a very low level campaign, verging almost on extinction. But who is to blame for this sorrowful predicament if not the ANP, along with the PPP and the MQM? All the three had been in power at the centre, almost for the whole of the past five years. And so were all the three in Sindh, where the port city is aflame with insensate bloodletting, terrorism and criminality now for years on end. Then, together with the PPP, the ANP had been in rule in KP which on its watch of five years has sunk into incessant terrorism unleashed by militants of all shades and stripes.
The question is what did these three parties do to prostrate the monster of terrorism? Did they draw up a counter-terrorism strategy? Did they huddle up with the military command and hammer out an action plan to combine up the state's military power and civil power to take on the terrorist monsters? Could any of the three say in all honesty if it worked sincerely to confront the merchants of death and destruction upfront indiscriminately? The ANP had every reason to be in the forefront of counter-terrorism campaigners as it had suffered massively at the hands of terrorists and lost hundreds of its workers and dozens of its leaders, including some very respectable personages, to the bullets and bombs of terrorists. Yet the party took a backseat while the wicked terrorists played holi with the innocent blood of citizens under its very nose. So what is the point now in crying over spilt milk? The party did not act when it should have and has picked the wild oats it itself along with the PPP and the MQM had sowed.
The ANP, as also the PPP, must now confess their cardinal sin of ignoring and neglecting the masses so forgetfully, for which the electorate has served them so vengefully. And both would do well not to commit this sin again lest they are wiped out altogether clean from the political scene by the electorate.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/thefrontierpost/posts/456240971118062

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