Consequences of the PML-N and PPP split

What does the parting of ways mean for the politics of Punjab and the country?

Finally, the PPP and the PML-N have parted ways in the Punjab, after months of bickering and three years of an uneasy relationship. What does this mean for the politics of Punjab and the country? The split will definitely push the two major parties, or two competing power groups with dynastic leaders, to confrontational politics. It is yet to be seen whether the bouts of power struggle will be as ugly and as no-holds-barred as in the earlier decades but, from now on, they will play a very different game than they have during the past three years, at least publicly.

What game is that likely to be? Sadly, it is going to be the same, old-fashioned political horse-trading, which is our contribution to the political vocabulary of developing nations. As long as there are horses willing to be traded, there will be buyers in the political market. This is necessitated by the logic of parliamentary democracy in which majorities in the legislatures create political executives. The stability of such a system hinges on the loyalties of legislators to the political parties that provide them with a label, a forum and an electoral constituency.

To defeat such trends, the leaders of the two major parties, with the gentle persuasion of will-wishers of stable democracy in the country, reached a remarkable understanding in the form of the Charter of Democracy. If we examine this charter closely, it is the second important social compact among our political elite, after the constitution. Sadly, the two parties have moved away from this compact. The creation of the so-called ‘Unification Bloc’, the larger fragment of the PML-Q, was the beginning of the unravelling of the compact. One may argue that the unravelling had started earlier and the commitment of the two sides, to the rules of the political game and how fairly they would play it, was weak.

In creating the so-called ‘Unification Bloc’ in the Punjab Assembly, the PML-N has not played by the rules it apparently committed itself to. The argument that the members of the unification bloc have found their way back into their parent party betrays the reason. It is the same old logic that this party, and its rivals have given in the past when doing the business of political horse-trading.

The League has used its power — mainly that of patronage and how it works in the social webs of agrarian society — in Punjab to create this faction. Imagine, how it could have succeeded in causing such a cataclysmic blow to the PML-Q without this power? True, this party came out of the main League, supported a military regime and played in the hands of Pervez Musharraf for too long, but it contested the 2008 elections under its own flag and political identity. Elections are the time when the candidates make up their minds about choosing a party identity. These individuals, who are mostly mature and experienced men, and who have defected from the PML-Q, didn’t exercise this choice at that time. Doing so now is not only unethical, it is also a cloudy affair legally.

We have to be concerned about the horse-trading that could now take place as a result of this episode. Without the emergence of this bloc, and its political support to the Punjab government, the PML-N could not have parted ways with the PPP. Now, feeling secure in numbers, it has done just that, and this is likely to change the political landscape of Punjab and the politics of the country.

Winning the numbers game in the Punjab assembly may encourage the PML-N to be aggressive in pushing for fresh elections and to even launch a movement to achieve this purpose. We may be entering yet another rough patch of in our political history.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2011.