Politics can be classified into several categories.
There is Politics of Power, which is the standard form of politics. All politics, whether it subscribes to noble causes or otherwise, in the finally reckoning, can be regarded to have power as its ultimate goal.
There is then politics of opportunism, of self-interest, of dialectic materialism, and of ruthless greed. All these forms can simply be regarded as branches of politics of power.
In some of these forms, respect for values and principles takes the back seat, allowing one’s cruder and baser instincts to handle the steering wheel. In the last few weeks or months, people of Pakistan had the ‘unenviable’ privilege of witnessing (as well as of being subjected to) the wily wickedness of the ‘politics’ of this breed.
Another category-not altogether non-existent is known as politics of principles-of well -defined ideology and goals.
The practitioners of this form of politics may not be easy to find, but somehow they too have existed in various societies. The Father of our Nationhood was a supreme example in this respect.
It is often regarded hard to keep ‘principles’ above the ground realities. Precisely why, those who have failed to bend their ‘principles’ when these are considered unsustainable, have been regarded as failures.
But a less rigid form of politics is politics of National Interest. This form of politics does not require an ‘unbending’ posture when it comes to principles, but still it does not make itself ‘flexible’ enough to threaten the requisites of National Interest.
The minimum that the people of Pakistan expect from all their leaders today is a willingness to let national interest acquire ‘ascendance’ over their cruder and baser instincts.
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