The people of our country have certain characteristics. I'm not sure if it's geographical or anthropological in nature. Perhaps it's ingrained in the DNA. Even if we don't have food in our stomachs, we live day and night in a dream, and that dream is politics. Politics means parties, and parties mean rivalry, as we can see.

Everyone is in a race—who will surpass whom, beat them, uproot them, and take control of the country. To legitimise this takeover, goals, ideals, and manifestos are crafted with all sorts of attractive words. Detailed programmes are made that seem to complicate people's lives. So what? This is politics. And politics, in this country, is a grand democratic right. Who has the courage to take away that right? Yet, one party manages to shut down another party's politics. It's said it protects public interest, strengthens democracy, and preserves the sovereignty of the state.

The game of banning parties in this country has been going on for a long time. When we first became independent, we had our cherished Pakistan. Right at the beginning, the Communist Party was banned because they didn't believe in democracy. They practiced class-struggle politics, and it was said they were anti-Islam. How could something anti-Islam exist in the Muslim country of Pakistan? During 1954, the ban on the Communist Party was lifted when a coalition government led by the United Front and later the Awami League was in power in East Pakistan. During Ayub Khan's military rule, the party was banned again, and this ban remained until 1971.