Pakistan`s angry political culture
BY M A L E E H A L O D H I 2021-01-04
Part-2
Political leaders spend more time vilifying the other than conveying what they
stand for and how they propose to address the country`s challenges.
Those in power seem to equate government performance with humiliating rivals
while oppositionleaders return the compliment by using equally of fensive
language. This has become habit forming.
The result is that an unedifying new normal has been established.
A number of factors might help to explain what has contributed to this new
normal in Pakistan`s political culture. First and foremost, political parties
no longer seem to represent any set of ideas or have coherent programmes except
as platitudes.
The lack of distinct party platforms has in fact fostered a phase of issueless
politics and personalised power struggles. There is no debate on ideas or
policy alternatives. This makes the resort to shallow and provocative rhetoric
an easy option and becomes the political weapon of choice.
It can be argued that the rise of a new political force, PTI, has also
contributed to a more combative political culture by leaders who used language
and engaged in conduct that upended traditional political norms. This became
its way of challenging the political status quo, which it had no ability to do
in any substantive sense. The point is that once established norms are
discarded, that infects the whole body politic and contagion spreads across all
parties who adopt the same language and behaviour. This is what seems to have
happened.
Other factors are also important in understanding this change in political
culture. The proliferation of the broadcast and social media has in recent
years made numerous information platforms available to leaders and their
followers to communicate and direct polemics against opponents. The era of the
print media (when TV was a government monopoly) imposed sharp limits on what
was fit to print and thus inhibited most vitriol from being uttered and
published. By its very nature the independent broadcast media did away with
these constraints and encouraged a no holds barred discourse. Talk shows
provided adversarial settings, accentuated polarised debate and preferred heat
over light in exchanges between public representatives.