LAHORE, July 26: The forthcoming local body polls are bringing about a new culture of decency, polity and cooperation in politics at the grassroots. Workers of different political parties having divergent views on various issues are coming closer to one another, especially those in the opposition.

Those, who had been labelling each other in the past as traitors, security risks and agents of commission mafia, have come up with various workable proposals for forming joint panels in the local polls even before elders of their party could suggest anything in this regard.

“In most of the cases the panels have been reasonably acceptable to us,” MMA’s District President Hafiz Salman Butt says.

It is observed that where they could not strike adjustments, they are not indulging in the past practice of mudslinging and levelling allegations.

At various corner meetings of different parties attended by this reporter, the speakers were seen challenging their rivals on their past performance regarding local development and not accusing each other’s leaders of corruption or of other such charges.

Until recently, leaders as well as activists of the PPP and the PML-N used to call each other’s leaders security risks for the country and plunderers of the national wealth, while the MMA men had been terming both the parties two sides of a based coin and agents of imperial powers. The sloganeering would gear up during elections.

The leaders would occasionally sit together, but the workers, being emotional, would not.

The scenario is now changing. Workers more than their leaders are taking to relatively sober election campaigns; no slogans against any party but for their own.

“It seems that the bitter past has been forgotten for a better future,” observes Lahore PPP secretary-general and MPA Samiullah Khan.