A bit of chutzpah on display in Islamabad. The President of the Republic pledged on Nelson Mandela International Day, to “strengthen democratic norms of civility across party lines, tolerance for dissent, inclusive and democratic decision-making, freedom of speech, equality before the law and social justice for the empowerment of (the) country and (the) people.”
Big words, coming from a man that has behaved like a petulant child in the aftermath of the vote of no confidence that led to the change of the civil government. Yes, the President is usually a member of the ruling coalition, and is elected from both chambers of legislature in the centre and all of them in the provinces. But the office is not supposed to be political; the bearer is the symbol of the federation. When it comes to the President, there is impartiality to be expected between federating units, between the centre and a federating unit, between the centre and all the federating units. Partiality between mere here-today-gone-tomorrow political parties is unthinkable. But that is exactly what President Alvi has behaved like in recent times. He has thrown a spanner in the works, so to speak, from the moment his (former, if in name only) party was ousted.
Though there were no such expectations from him when he was a mere political party worker, even then he had violated the basic norms expected of mature workers of political parties, having raided the offices of the PTV headquarters during the infamous dharna of 2014. Civility across party lines isn’t what they teach at dental school, it seems.
Has the President had a change of heart or was the issuance of the statement something quite mechanical, written up by the diligent bureaucrats in the Presidency, whose thankless job is just to type these statements up whenever there is an international day of some sort?
