Politics of defection

It may well be a tit-for-tat reaction from the govt to the opposition’s attempts at bringing change at the Senate helm

Even though the Constitution — in the wake of the 18^th amendment passed in year 2010 — forbids change of loyalty by lawmakers in very clear words, our parliamentary system is rife with the politics of defections, floor crossings and forward blocs. Shaikh Rasheed, the minister for railways, says nine more MNAs have ‘donned the joggers to run away from the PML-N’. And Shahbaz Gill, the Punjab CM’s chief spokesperson, claims that apart from the 15 PML-N MPAs who met Prime Minister Imran Khan at his Bani Gala residence on Saturday, 31 more plan to leave the opposition party. Fawad Chaudhry, the federal minister for science and technology, has even gone to the extent of saying that the Sindh government can be toppled within 48 hours if the PM permits. All this is a clear indication that horse trading is on.

The political vote trading has long been a major bane of our parliamentary system even with a law forbidding it being in place. Remember the 14^th amendment to the Constitution? The amendment, brought by the heavy-mandated Nawaz Sharif government that came into being after the 1997 general elections, repealed the law that had allowed lawmakers to disagree to party policy during parliamentary voting and shift loyalty to any other party. But the amendment failed to prevent the formation of what was called the ‘like-minded group’ within the PML-N parliamentary party. Led by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the same like-minded group went on to become the PML-Q. With Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator, in the saddle in 1999, there was a new set of laws that also let a PPP-Patriot carved out of the PPP of Benazir Bhutto. Later, in 2011 the PML-Q had itself to face a breakaway faction by the name of ‘unification bloc’ that sided with the PML-N in the Punjab Assembly.

In focus now is the PTI — the party whose leader, now the country’s prime minister, had been bitterly critical of the ‘Chhaanga Maanga politics of the Sharifs’. It may well be a tit-for-tat reaction from the government to the opposition’s attempts at bringing change at the Senate helm, but it does not augur well for the future of politics and democracy in the country. 

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2019.

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