Instead of focusing their energies on providing us with people-friendly laws, almost each legislator present in the National Assembly Tuesday preferred to squander the private members’ day in cheap point scoring. They kept struggling to grab attention of the chair to speak on all possible issues under the sun through points of order. Various attempts were also made to wail over the perennial sense of insecurity prevailing in Balochistan these days.
Cutting across the party divide, members from that province felt no shame to unanimously concede that Army-backed law enforcers were the “real rulers” there. The elected civilians of Islamabad and Quetta are disregarded with contempt by these rulers. How to deal with them remains the question, however. And ‘our representatives’ offered no way out. Their cathartic wails have rather begun to sound hypocritical for Islamabad-based journalists. Discussing Balochistan, National Assembly members from that province often turn emotional and rhetorical. They deliver words, words and words just for the consumption of home constituencies. They make noises only to appease the furious Baloch youth. Their rhetoric is nothing but a pathetic attempt in self-preservation.
The lead players of Zardari-Gilani government are equally busy in dealing with blowback of a Supreme Court decision that had ‘suspended’ 28 members who came to various legislative houses through by-elections. A validating amendment in the constitution is required to protect these members from being unseated. But the same cannot be delivered without the support of at least 228 members of the National Assembly, required for establishing the 2/3rd majority.
So far the government is only certain of managing not more than 220 members after desperate efforts. Only the PML-N can bail it out as it has 90-plus members in the National Assembly. Thanks to pragmatic but not so dovish support of Senator Ishaq Dar, Gilani’s messengers to Nawaz Sharif’s camp came too close to getting its support. To the utter surprise of friends-to-all Khurshid Shah, however, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan firmly refused to budge when they sat down to negotiate the final draft of the proposed amendment late Monday evening. Nisar kept insisting that the government must add a clearly written clause in the proposed amendment to ensure that the caretaker prime minister of the interim setup tasked to hold the next elections would be appointed with “consensus between the outgoing prime minister and the leader of the opposition”.
So far the much trumpeted 18th amendment envisaged this appointment with “consultation” between the two. Nisar arrogantly insists that Gilani and his promoter and protector, Zardari, do not believe in ‘meaningful consultation.’ Both of them managed the appointments of ‘their cronies’ as the Chief Election Commissioner and head of the Accountability Bureau. “I cannot trust them anymore,” is the refrain he resorts to almost deliriously. Aftab Ahmad Sherpao supported him to the end.
The consensus-building skills of Raza Rabbani were summoned by the government SOS. He reportedly succeeded in making the eternally realistic Maulana Fazlur Rehman to fathom the bitter reality that in our either/or culture, politicians seldom talk of consensus. By employing various tools of pressure against the present government, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan could still expect getting an interim prime minister of his liking to supervise the next elections. But binding the future governments to seek consensus for the appointment of election-delivering setups via a clearly written clause in the constitution could lead to political deadlocks. Instead of viciously debating the semantic differences in ‘consultation’ and ‘consensus’, seasoned politicians like Nisar should rather be focusing on evolving means that ensure holding of free, fair and impartial elections in times to come.
Nisar is just not willing to listen, however, and he continues to get very loud and solid support from Khawaja Asif, another hawk from the PML-N. Dar is rather feeling abandoned by his colleagues while seeking workable means to provide constitutional cover to members of various elected houses, suspended by the Supreme Court.
No doubt, the hawkish stance of Nisar et al provides fuel to growing ranks of hawks within the government. Since the building of tensions within different pillars of our state via memogate and initiation of the contempt of court proceedings against the prime minister, the growing number of hawks in the government have increasingly begun feeling that the ‘game is set’ against them by extra-parliamentary forces. It is time to confront them head on. The perpetual bending and appeasement will not work. I have it from highly reliable sources that the government emissaries will be holding ‘a final round’ with the opposition leader Tuesday evening, with a take-it-or-leave-it mindset.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 8th, 2012.
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