Mixed political messages

If Speaker can go public on his uncertainty then it is reasonable to assume he wasn't talking off top of his head

When the Speaker of the National Assembly goes on record having said that he does not see the assemblies completing their full term, then it is fair to say that all is not well in the political jungle. The turmoil of Panamagate has receded into the background having taken its toll, today it is the ghosts of the Faizabad debacle that is going to haunt the government right up until the polling stations open for voting in the 2018 General Election. The Speaker is a powerful figure in his own right, and although technically above the political fray and impartial, he can express an opinion, though divining its import in this instance is a conundrum of Machiavellian complexity.

If the Speaker is prepared to go public on his uncertainty as to the security of the assemblies then it is reasonable to assume that he was not talking off the top of his head, unmindful of consequences. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has said that it is willing to bail out the government over the 24^th Constitutional Amendment Bill that is stalled in the Senate for the last month, the quid pro quo being the government being ‘flexible’ in the meeting of the heads of all political parties. The passing of the stalled bill which relates to delimitation of electoral constituencies and acceptance of the provisional census figures is going to determine whether or not the election goes ahead on time  — and time is now extremely tight.

Then there is the pullback by the government of the bill relating to the K-P-Fata merger that took many by surprise, not least the K-P government, the fallout from the Model Town A report and the distinct unease about who signed what and who is the real beneficiary politically of the agreement that ended the Faizabad faceoff. The PML-N in the form of Prime Minister Abbasi now in London pooh-poohed all this flummery. Crisis what crisis? The PM may be right but there is any number of balls in the air and the government has dropped several recently. Uncertainty? Certainly. Downfall and dissolution? Probably not.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2017.

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