A case for a unity government

Not the PDM type but a real one which includes all parties elected to the National Assembly including the PTI. The government which will include the cabinet and positions where elected representatives are nominated, including parliamentary committees, should be proportionally constituted around the share of representation of the political parties in the NA. The trouble with this suggestion, as I make it, is that I am the one making it where it right off will be deemed externally instituted and thus expressly dismissed by most if not my readers. That’s a tag I have been unable to shed, yet I prod along.

There are two qualifiers though which need enunciation. One, that all PTI affiliates and supporters will hate me for it because in their world what alone counts is a zero-sum conclusion to the current game of thrones with their knight in armour riding out of his predicaments on a white stallion. To them PTI without him is inconceivable. The real world is constituted differently and the politics that we practise here includes long periods of hiatus which must be respected. Constitution and law work in one’s favour when the winds are fair. In headwinds, trials and tribulations begin and laws, rules and statutes synch in adversity. However, these are happily short-circuited to find one favour and pleasure. This is our kind of politics, being practised as we speak.

As a way of an example, political practitioners — especially the PTI — need to read Asif Zardari closely. His politics is a perfect composition of realism, pragmatism and idealism. He chants Bhuttoist rhetoric as his ideational inspiration yet knows his limitations and incapacity to carry the polls nation-wide, and yet must retain his domination of Sindh which in real terms is his and his party’s political foundation. The PTI too has a similar dilemma and must deal with it through a developed matrix of possibilities and options which can range from ideational to the most pragmatic. The first order of business for the PTI is to survive as a political party, retain its structures even if nominally to be strengthened when winds are fairer, and remain relevant to the political landscape. Some times are only meant to be bided; the party should bide these through.

The second qualifier is the increasing uncertainty about polls despite the undertakings and pronouncements of the Election Commission and the Supreme Court. The Constitution has been so badly mauled in the last one year that exceeding its ordainments and invocations is no more anomalous. And hence more than rules, laws and the tradition it is the cumulative sense of our political, economic and social precariousness which drives the decision process. When I only referred to a possibility of a National Unity Government (NUG) in my last piece with a proviso that the puritans will cringe, puritans cringed. To them holding elections is a procedural democratic exercise which should not be exceptional. They are right except that the comfort of the interim arrangement just might trump constitutional determinants which already stand compromised.

Let us say we are in a psycho-political muddle of perceptions and apprehensions that we must collectively navigate out of. Let us also accept that the leadership available to the nation in the obtaining, most complex, sociopolitical context, as restricted as it is, will need to temper its fickle disposition and appear more consensual and cooperative to forge a collective way out of our current plight — Nawaz Sharif’s recent statements seeking retributive compensation are not helping. This will help restore faith in resuming the political process within the agreed timeframe. It will also appease undue alarm about broader acceptability and credibility of what is emplaced as a political solution without the fear of a backlash. Imran Khan is already incarcerated and is unlikely to be free or eligible to contest. That takes one unpredictability out. Of the other two Asif Zardari and his party are already given to conciliation and least confrontation in working democracy forward. Which really leaves Nawaz Sharif as the only piece in the puzzle who must resolve the distortions in his disposition to help form a common front to nation’s common challenges.

Nawaz Sharif is faced with numerous challenges. Legal processes will sooner or later work themselves out. The electoral landscape, however, isn’t as obvious as was being viewed from afar in London. Credibility more than acceptability is the issue here. Even if all roadblocks are removed to make Nawaz Sharif’s ride into power the smoothest ever it will come at a cost which will hang heavy on his sensitive self. Others around him may have convinced him to take the plunge for personal, tribal and political benefit but given the economic dilapidation, social fragmentation and political instability, it will take a herculean effort to lead renewal and restoration.

Given his stint from 2013-17, he may hold little appetite for it. He was a reluctant and a remote PM — of it there are numerous statistics proving his disinterest. In this turn it shall need to be a hands-on leadership. The other aspect of his person revolves around his instinctive self which mostly turns explosive and confrontational. He will need to control the impulse. The political landscape haunts his usually self-assured self as he sees popularity and acceptability slipped away already in the larger public perception. If he finds himself uneasy and in discomfort it is a natural consequence of a landscape that stands altered measurably. He will need to factor each of these odds to style his leadership differently in a greatly more cooperative and consensual mechanism of governance. It will be a lot of hard work.

If the terms that explain the current national predicament are consternation and procrastination, political players — especially Mian Nawaz Sharif — have a role to play in appeasing those fears. Asif Zardari is smart. He wants elections and is therefore flexible on when we may hold them, ‘a week here or a week there’, while others seek an open-ended delay to better times — whatever that will mean — and fairer prospects unsure of what the electoral landscape will deliver. Elections are the key, the trigger and the fuel to fire the political process which is this nation’s principal hope to resume normalcy. The new politics will however need to shed old habits and not be the vehicle to find opportunity for the elites alone. This time and forward only the good of the people will and should count.

To thus ease the distress that Nawaz Sharif may find himself in terms of popular acceptability the route to slow reinstitution of faith will come by way of a cooperative political leadership in a comprehensive unity government, including the PTI, and veritable performance in policy, governance, administration, security and law and order to reestablish the credibility along with acceptability. It will be a long and a grueling road, but it shall need to be taken.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2023.

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