Once more unto the breach…

Whatever outcome of Panama Papers sideshow real battle is going to be fought at polling booth and ballot box in 2018

It was Henry V addressing his troops before the Battle of Agincourt that spoke the famous words, and there is a tinge of the Shakespearean about the battle that is shaping up for the control of Pakistan. Loins are being girded right, left and centre and whatever the outcome of the Panama Papers sideshow the real battle is going to be fought at the polling booth and ballot box in 2018. There seems little chance that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is going to be unseated much to the bitter chagrin of the leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) who will doubtless float a raft of conspiracy theories in support of his case. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) everywhere is a shadow of its former self with a clumsy and cumbersome co-chairmanship that hobbles the party in every sense — and throttles the new generation leaving them gasping for political breath. The rest, the minor parties and the religious groupings, can be safely ignored except as pawns in the power games that might follow the election.

Which brings us to the call to arms issued by the PM on Friday 7^th July when he called on his opponents to ‘fight us in the political arena’. Although he did not name the PTI leader, it is clear who his remarks are aimed at, and no matter what one’s political inclination it has to be admitted that he makes his call from a position of relative strength in electoral terms. The PTI may hold Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but the PML-N holds Punjab and like it or not Punjab is and will remain the seat of primary power until a party or grouping with the heft of the PML-N can field an army. That is at least one electoral cycle away and there are no obvious alliances that would hold together long enough to mount a successful campaign against the PML-N.

Calls for revelations about conspiracies from the PTI are mere window dressing. Calls to once more come unto the breach, dear friends, puts the electoral machine on notice that there is a battle to be fought, Panama Capers notwithstanding in its outcome(s).

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2017.

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