Time was when the politicians of this country used to hold public meetings at prominent central places of the cities like chowks and parks like Chowk Yadgaar, Chowk Fawara and Jinnah park in Peshawar Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi, Mochi gate in Lahore, Gandhi gardens in Karachi and Nisthar park in Multan to mention a few.
Another notable feature of those public rallies was that they were held at about midnight, after the night prayers so that no inconvenience is caused to the general public in their daily chores and no traffic jam should occur. The speakers made it a point not to indulge in character assassination of their political adversaries and didn’t use derogatory and unparliamentary language in their speeches against them. Issues rather than personalities were discussed in the speeches.
The public meetings were taken as a serious matter by them and unlike the present public rallies in which the speeches of politicians are interspersed with pauses during which music is played by groups of bands as if they are music concerts and not political meetings .This new pattern of public rallies took birth during the era of Z A Bhutto and it has caught on since then when humorous remarks started to be made also by the speakers in these rallies against their political foes.
