Pakistani journalism despite getting almost a 38-channel boost by surprisingly a military dictator Pervez Musharraf never did rise from obscurity to touch excellence of thought process & perceive the future with intellectually vibrant futuristic scenario presentation. We got bogged in questions such as Who owns the Avenfield Apartment, is Bhutto still alive in Sindh, Is the first lady of the last prime minister Imran Khan really practices black magic as alleged, and much more frivolous self-apparent fact or fiction type of questions. A lot of intellectuals identified as journalists keep on pushing one view or the other as their inclination is to be it natural or artificially procured.
It was a pleasant surprise when Dr. Moeed Pirzada in one of his vlogs completely shifted gears and discussed the futuristic scenario of a political party in Pakistan and termed it as a dying dinosaur. The logical sequencing & progression to the inevitable intellectual conclusion raised my hope about journalism in Pakistan. Maybe, just maybe it’s the first drop of rainfall soon to be turned into a deluge. With no pretension of having such a logical progression of thought process but 50-plus years of experience in the Pakistani political jungle I would like to try to take it forward.
Read more: Pakistan’s politics: A game or serious business?
I would like to use my marketing experience to explain this further
Any political party is a product. A thought process that is sold to the consumers i.e. the voters. The thought process can be described as leftist tendencies, rightist thought processes, or left-of-center or right-of-center inclinations. These demarcations are a kind of packaged product that has been identified/marked by democratic entities. Of course, we can rest assured that we will find many adulterations of these products where regional tendencies are included, sometimes an enmity perception developed (between countries, between areas, between ethnicity), sometimes fear factor endorsed, etc.
Most of the adulteration of the product that is produced is usually negatively inclined. It’s a thought process that is adulterated by design to suit the ulterior motive of the seller. For example, after the waning of the Bhutto factor, Pakistan People’s Party developed a scarecrow by the name of the Muhajir Qoumi Movement MQM & created/developed a rural-urban clash scenario to demarcate their product thought process.
This demarcation eventually became one of the major factors in the demise of the Pakistan Peoples Party from Punjab as Punjab was not connected or affected by the scarecrow not ethnically nor regionally. The state benefit is the utility of the product which prompts the consumers i.e. the voters to buy the product again and again. Actually, this is what happens in established democratic countries for the UK or the United States Of America and many other countries of the world.
Like any other product that goes through a normal product life which is more or less a hyperbole, a political party also goes through the same life cycle. Thus you can see product relaunch such as new benefit promises, change of leadership, thought process change, a new scarecrow, a new problem created & solution offered. It almost follows the same product lifecycle that a normal product in the market follows.
However, sometimes real and sometimes artificial changes are created to allow the lifecycle not to take a perfect hyperbole but get an extra boost to benefit from a longer life cycle. In Pakistan, you can see the artificial relaunch of PMLN over the years. It started with Zias mission graduated to a scarecrow concept of Pakistan Peoples Party, moved to showy construction leading to Khata hai to khilata bhi hai (divides bounty amongst many) concepts then finally to a flip flop between for and anti-establishment posture. All these makeovers assisted by the establishment & vested interest group boosted the life cycle of PMLN. But during all these makeovers the hyperbole keeps on getting a lower and lower trajectory.
Read more: Growing menace of polarized politics in Pakistan
The example of Alamgir from the Mughal empire was an appropriate one
We can actually put forward another easily decipherable event progression. There is no question about it that the UK or Great Britain or England with its allies won the second world war but the fall of the British empire was penned during that victory. The treatment given by both political parties presents a great contrast one talking about the country’s progress philosophy concept of welfare.
Herein lies the addition to the dying dinosaur concept so wonderfully illustrated. World history bears witness to the fact that time sometimes makes some approaches or strategies redundant without any logical explanation but the realization that the time had come for the redundancy of the idea. In marketing, it is a strange phenomenon that the strength of the product or company or entity which gives it great success remains the same but it turns into weaknesses that leads to the death of the concept. When Marketing experts denote the reason for the failure of the entity they find to their bemusement it’s the strength of the company. So we can conclude that strength as the cause of success over a period of time turns into weaknesses and leads to extinction.
Read more: Politics of thugs in Pakistan
This me me selfish concept, the narrow tunnel vision, the concentration towards the selfish interest that took PMLN to the height of its glory has finally turned into a fatal weakness which is leading it to plummet extinction. So in a way we can say father time has defeated PMLN and made it into the dying dinosaur that it is now. Its fait accompli, it is written in the stars, it is spelled by time and it is inevitable.
The author has worked for Unilever for 25 years. He is a professional translator/interpreter of five languages and is also a certified computer trainer. He is currently living in Virginia, USA. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.