THE way the national political scene has taken shape post-elections often reminds me of a story my mother used to tell when I was a child. It was about two brothers, one being clever and the other being naive. As the story goes, they inherited a cow from their father, and decided to equally divide the cow; the ‘clever’ taking the rear half and giving the front half to the ‘naive’.

Now the ‘naive’ brother had to toil the whole day, prepare fodder and feed the cow, whereas the ‘clever’ got the milk and cow dung, which he sold in the market, without having to do any labour and without sharing the profit he earned.

In fact, something similar to the story is happening in our political arena; the ruling party in the centre and its ally in Sindh ‘inherited’ the seat of the government. Without going into details of how they got it, I must say the division of government is similar to the portion of the story narrated above.

As such, the ‘clever’ party has got all the lucrative posts — president, deputy speaker of National Assembly, chairman of Senate as well as governors of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

All these positions are prestigious while being free from any blame. If the arrangement fails to deliver, the ‘naive’ party has to bear the brunt of the rising prices, escalating inflation, spike in terrorism, and the opposition’s wrath in parliament and on the streets.

In the latter half of the story, inte- restingly, the ‘naive’ brother realised his folly, and came up with a way to teach the ‘clever’ a lesson. He stopped giving fodder to the cow and would tickle it whenever the ‘clever’ tried to milk it. I wonder if our political scenario will keep pace with this part of the story as well.

Malik ul Quddoos
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2024