Pakistan’s party politics? Strip away the flags and slogans, and what remains is a family tree. Democracy exists here largely as a theatre. If you were not born into the right name, you are an audience member at best, watching a play where you will never be cast. Party elections are rituals without meaning before the whole spectacle collapses back into the old hierarchy. The system survives on paper, but in spirit, it has long flatlined. Ordinary citizens calling for reform? They barely register as background noise. Ideas are drowned out by surnames that refuse to die, passed down like heirlooms. Power does not change hands in Pakistan; it merely changes rooms within the same ancestral mansion.

Parties hold “elections” for show. No real contests, no suspense, and more choreography than competition. The winners are known before the polls open. The Sharifs treat PML-N like their private estate, the Bhutto-Zardaris keep PPP chained to their family name, and PTI, born with the promise to break the dynasty cycle, has ended up orbiting around one man’s cult of personality. Leadership is not earned; it’s announced at press conferences and sanctified by sycophancy. The party worker who imagines merit will be rewarded is living in fiction. Policy becomes the mood of the day, governance a collection of favours distributed by whim. The structure rewards obedience and exiles intellect. What passes for politics today is flattery performed to the rhythm of applause, with truth buried beneath........

© The Friday Times