Hurtling towards a disastrous deadlock

Government is equally guilty of being insensitive to the threat to the public at large

Pakistan is fast approaching a serious political logjam which, if not resolved immediately, could lead to a constitutional deadlock. The 11-party opposition conglomerate, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), after having completed its three-month long, six-city public protest tour has announced its intentions to march on Islamabad in February, seeking PM Imran Khan’s resignation failing which, to submit their own which they hope would eventually bring down Khan’s PTI-led coalition government.

On the other hand, the PM, accusing the opposition of trying to blackmail him into issuing what he terms the NRO, has refused to dignify the opposition’s protests with offers of talks to meet its demands. He has, however, offered talks on any subject other than their desire to pin him down to issue the NRO.

But the opposition refusing to recognise the government as legitimate has already rejected Khan’s talk offers vowing to deny the ‘NRO’ to the PM for the corruption cases he and his ‘lackeys’ had allegedly indulged in.

That the opposition is pursuing its long-drawn protest campaign when the country is in the grip of a severer wave of Covid-19 portrays it as an insensitive lot of politicians. And this has seemingly tended to justify at least in the eyes of Khan’s fans, in a roundabout way though, the PM’s accusation that the opposition’s protest is really an attempt of desperate ‘criminals’ to blackmail him into offering them the NRO.

Also, the PDM’s chosen method for sending the government home, if anything, is unconstitutional, to say the least — a civilian coup! What kind of democratic precedent such a move, if it succeeds, would set? In fact, it would perhaps cause the vote to suffer further ignominy. And even if the current government was in truth ‘selected’ and a ‘fixed’ superior judiciary disqualified Nawaz Sharif, it still does not justify the PDM’s deployment of an extra-constitutional method to get rid of the government.

None of the general elections since 1988 can be regarded as fair and free. All governments that came into being as a result were selected – some wholly and some partially. Most were ousted midway through, either by direct military intervention or by the now defunct Article 58(2) b. Only the last two completed their tenures, but each with one PM minus as a result of ‘questionable’ judicial interventions. So, the best route available to the PDM was to appeal to this very allegedly ‘fixed’ judiciary. As it is, when it does not feel any qualms in going to this very judiciary appealing against the verdicts of NAB courts then why is it shying away from going to the same judiciary taking its case against the ‘selected’ government?

But as they say it takes two to tango. The PTI-led coalition government is equally responsible for hurtling the country towards a constitutional deadlock. On March 20, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari declared that in view of the serious threat of the pandemic he would put on the back burner his political differences with the ruling coalition and accept Imran Khan as his PM without reservations. This gesture of Bilawal received nationwide appreciation but the PM disdainfully ignored the offer.

Rather, on March 25, the PM provoked the opposition further by walking out abruptly, without informing other participants or even seeking the permission of the chair from a parliamentary parties’ meeting called online by NA speaker Asad Qaisar. The meeting had been called specifically to develop a consensus across party lines with regard to official plans to meet the pandemic’s challenge.

Not only the government was equally guilty of being insensitive to the threat to the public at large as it continuously refused to mobilise the opposition’s cooperation for jointly meeting the challenge, on the political front too it kept provoking the opposition by calling it names daily. Not a single day would go without the PM or his dozen-or-so spin doctors spewing below the belt abuses against the opposition.