FROM A RINGSIDE SEAT: traditional venomous political game plan!!

The Pakistani politics has started picking up traditional rhetoric resorting to contentious and venomous game plan as about a year is left in the advent of next elections in 2013. Though revolution has been chosen as a mode of translating people's dreams into reality by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) in the first place, all other close rivals are following the suit.
In their attempt to mobilise their parties' faithful to gather support from the areas where some parties are non-existent their major political leaders have started hectic reorganisation with the slogan of alleged corruption and incompetence shown by President Asif Ali Zardari.
The main opposition political party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which claims to be the saviour of democracy, is being targeted for its alleged unreliability and opportunism. In the past PML-N main leadership preferred to stay in Saudi Arabia instead of facing the dictator's wrath on the plea that mosquitoes cause malaria, a fatal disease in the poor region.
The problem is that no party has a clear cut development plan to take out the country from the quagmire of poverty they have come up with another issue out of non issue, putting aside the prevailing problems being faced by the country to create Hazara and Saraiki provinces.
On one hand the PML-N has made Zardari's alleged sins of commission and omission the target of its anger in haste and on the other, Imran Khan's PTI is focussing on the alleged unreliability and opportunism of Nawaz Sharif and incompetence of PPP-led regime to rally support for its movement against the government.
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) headed by Altaf Hussain has come out in support of Zardari and against Nawaz Sharif and now with a new idea to set up Hazara and Saraiki provinces though they do not have even an elected councillor in these two provinces. Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has been carefully watching the campaign without getting into a vigorous counter campaign but slightly targeting the PML-N with the help of its allied parties like MQM.
The PPP does not seem frightened of Imran Khan, the only concern for them is Nawaz Sharif and for this purpose, it is feeling comfortable to let the MQM counter the PML-N without their direct involvement in the cross firing. This is what happened during Thursday session of National Assembly as PML-N and MQM members were at each other's throat over a resolution moved by MQM to initiate immediate debate on creation of new provinces in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to insiders, the PPP with the help of MQM, which is a non-entity in both KP and Punjab succeeded in initiating a debate regarding setting up new provinces to divert the attention of people from the major issues like price hike along with power and gas load-shedding.
The move was aimed at further widening the already existing differences between MQM and PML-N, which insiders believe proved successful despite stiff resistance by another close government ally ANP, which stood by PML-N on the issue of new provinces. Some observers believe that after PTI grand rallies in Karachi and Lahore, the PPP and the PML-N are afraid of losing their major bases of support in Punjab as the spirit of people present in the rallies was worth noticing.
The main issue angering the voters today is the deteriorating economic situation, worsening energy crisis which could get worse if the political parties did not press the PPP-led regime to rectify the situation though it is too late now. Even though all the political parties including the military leadership has been trying to project a 'couldn't care' attitude over public miseries and sky-rocketing inflation, while this could damage the interest of all the stakeholders as deteriorating economic situation needs a well thought out plan to put the train back on rails.
While the political drum-beaters may try to adopt a reasonable approach for satisfying the infuriated masses, but there is no clear-cut answer to two prominent questions: Will the opposition try for a premature election in 2012 and what would be the attitude of the army in the event of the contentious political debate getting more venomous, especially the controversial memogate scandal?
The indications from reliable political circles are that the political parties including the PTI of Imran Khan has no stomach to take to the street, demanding early elections and the present preoccupation is just a war of words to befool masses.