KARACHI: Call it an exercise in haste and a mere pre-election formality, the manifestos issued by most of more than half-a-dozen political parties appear to be rhetoric, in which almost 90 per cent of the content is identical. If one party wants to achieve, say, five by adding four to one, the other wants to get the same result by putting three and two together, and a more radical party strives to get there by subtracting one from six.
The manifestos appeared in quick succession, one after the other at a time when elections were hardly five or six weeks away. A cursory look at all these documents shows how superficial, meaningless and hollow these are. All parties, for instance, stand for democracy when none of them, without any exception, has ever organised elections within its own rank and file.
Not a single manifesto speaks of the growing monopolies and oligarchies that have distorted political and social environment and brought untold miseries on the people. There is no word on the implications of growing powers of stock exchange brokers who now control banks, financial institutions, brokerage houses, real estate business and commodities. Since there is no comprehension of these problems, there is no solution either, thereby announcing very loudly that the business of loot and plunder will go on with the same pace for the next five years as it did in the previous eight.
The manifesto of ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) needs a special mention. On page 25 of the manifesto, the ruling party speaks on the rights of the consumers. “Price hike and hoarding is breaking the backbone of the common man and steps will be taken to attack these twin anti-people practices,” declares the manifesto. The obvious questions are; Is it self-persecution or self-indictment? Can any party be so true to its people and to itself and confess frankly of its misdeeds? The logical answers come from cynics who call more than 200 per cent price hike of all kitchen items in the last five years and growing practice of hoarding of food items by ministers and traders of the ruling party a gift from a party that was created by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the year 2002. The NAB picked up many a widow and innocent woman in the dead of the night during the previous government, but no hoarder, profiteer and speculator was ever rounded up for investigation. With this track record, the PML(Q) now wants to establish “an independent, non-partisan, anti-corruption institution, free of government control.”
The 5D vision of PML(Q) – Democracy, Development, Devolution, Diversity and Defence – is a document to provide a good laughter and comic relief in an otherwise tension-packed political environment. In the name of development, the ruling party wants to do in the next five years what it did not do in the last five. For example, the manifesto announces the setting up of a Task Force to ensure access to clean drinking water to an overwhelming majority of the population only after hundreds, if not thousands, were killed by drinking contaminated water and from waterborne diseases during its tenure.
To counter the Ds of PML(Q), the Pakistan People’s Party headed by Benazir Bhutto promises a change through an equal number of Es – Employment, Education, Energy, Environment and Equality. In its manifesto, the PPP offers solutions for all problems