PPP-PML-N squabble

The fox came out firing from both holsters at BB’s birth anniversary, making it look like the ‘Sindh card’ again.

Pakistan is grateful that the Azad Kashmir elections are in process because the pre-poll mutual abuse between the two mainstream parties in the country was becoming unbearable. The PML-N and PPP crossed all limits as the nadir reached in civilised conduct took the political polish off both of them. In Azad Kashmir, where both are trying to make new inroads, trusting that vote is hate-based, they went at each other’s throats with gusto, but they could be in for a surprise: Both could be popularly blackballed for verbal misconduct, in Azad Kashmir as well as in the 2013 general election in Pakistan.

The PML-N was always uncomfortable with the right-wing media label of ‘friendly opposition’. The label was bestowed because columnists-turned-anchors knew that the PML-N flourished on emotions of revenge and sadism based on past jurisprudence of intercourse of the two parties. PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif was unwillingly sticking to what he thought would be a new moderate image of an elderly statesman, while the hawks — PML-N has rare doves — pulled him towards the hate-vote syndrome, telling him he would lose an entire chunk of Punjab. ‘Friendly opposition’ rankled relentlessly, although anywhere else in the world it would be a good ‘democratic’ image to cultivate.

The Azad Kashmir polls began the new phase in PPP-PML-N relations. The PML-N came out like the alpha lion it is, ruling Punjab; the PPP was the fox that survived through ambivalence (vis-à-vis the army), surreptitious defiance (vis-à-vis the Supreme Court) and Benazir Bhutto’s reconciliation (vis-à-vis the PML-N). It had loosed Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah on the PPP as a shot across the bow, warning of how Mian Sahib himself will launch the big salvo later on. At the centre, it was fire-breathing Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan who attacked anything that moved in the PPP ramparts till it cloyed even the cigarette-sellers of Lahore. The PML-N was turning back to the days when the unsavoury job was done by Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, disenchanted by the PML-N and still hostile towards the PPP.

The fox came out firing from both holsters at Benazir Bhutto’s birth anniversary, making it look like the ‘Sindh card’ all over again. President Asif Ali Zardari began by calling Nawaz Sharif a maulana, with multiple innuendos contained in the term: That he was the illicit political offspring of General Zia; that he was a covert abettor of the jihadi elements in Punjab that are killing Pakistan Army soldiers as henchmen of al Qaeda; and that he was aligning with Jamaat-e-Islami in the Azad Kashmir polls. There was also the clinching reference to the Pakistan Army whose prestige was bouncing back in the media after a low point reached in the wake of the Abbottabad raid, the PNS Mehran base attack and journalist Saleem Shahzad’s killing.

The Sindhi fox had tricked the Punjabi lion. Zardari said that the PPP will not be anti-army at the instigation of the PML-N, a role-reversing remark that made many PML-N loyalists squirm in the presence of Nawaz Sharif. Here is a Sindhi, disliked by the generals because of his WikiLeaks double-dealing, trying to cosy up to a predominantly Punjabi army. The PML-N camp saw the Zardari bouncer as an almost successful attempt to widen the gap between the army and the Sharifs. Nawaz Sharif’s attempt at being subtle backfired on him. He thought that by standing firm on the commissions, he was telling the army to distance itself from the PPP, but that did not happen. The inner circle glowered and Mian Sahib was forced to bite his nails once again. So on June 20, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif declared that the army was the crown of his head and its generals were his brothers.

Mian Sahib’s loneliness is of his own creation. He pushed back all the white flags thrust at him, first by the Q-League of Chaudhry Shujaat, then the MQM willing to ditch the PPP and then the Pir of Pagaro trying to fell a Sindhi by a Sindhi ruse. And then there was the eternal foe, Pervez Musharraf’s APML, and a stubbornly menacing Imran Khan. Zardari, with infinite flexibility, took the entire caboodle minus Musharraf and Imran on board and it looked like he gave as good as he got in the eyes of all objective observers.



Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2011.