Loss of control

The shambles at Faizabad, the surrender to a minor and previously little-known political group, the clear sympathies of many police personnel with those blocking the road and the inept management of the entire affair is having far-reaching consequences. The political state has taken a lurch to the right and in Punjab at least there are cracks appearing in the monolithic edifice that is the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). On Sunday 10^th December it was announced that five MNAs/MPAs had left the PML-N to join the religious party that was at the heart of the Faizabad incident. They need to do this to the respective speakers of the assemblies for their resignations and change of allegiance to conform to parliamentary protocols, but the announcement is significant.

All the religious parties whatever their title are to the right of the political spectrum, some more than others. Religious parties have never fared well in polls nationally either individually or when working collaboratively. Assuming the resignations are eventually formalised and the floor duly crossed, the marker is down for other elected members of the federal and provincial assemblies to do the same. If the party they have chosen to ally themselves with does not itself fragment — a possibility — then the forthcoming election may have unanticipated outcomes.

This is not to suggest that the PML-N vote bank is about to collapse because it is not, but it does reveal that the zeitgeist it caught in the past is no longer its to own. There is a sense of loss of control at the centre. The hub of some of the unrest, some say the trigger for it, is Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah who continues to refuse to resign saying that the only person who can take his resignation is Nawaz Sharif himself. It was Sanaullah that became the focus of the Faizabad incident and had he fallen on his sword early in the game we may not have arrived at the position the PML-N is in today. An extreme right-wing religious grouping is in the making, and we may see its elected representatives in the assemblies before long.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2017.

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