PM’s speech aftershocks

The prime minister’s stunning speech on Thursday reverberated in the Punjab Assembly yesterday when his Pakistan Peoples Party moved a resolution warning all and sundry to desist from what the resolution described as ‘launching any undemocratic step’.

The resolution moved by PPP’s Shaukat Basra was passed unopposed by the otherwise divided House. The members resolved to resist any attempt to derail democracy. The message to the establishment seemed to be quite clear: no matter how divided the political parties represented in the assembly might appear if push comes to shove, the establishment would find it very hard to find any allies.

It was, essentially, an opposition resolution. Hence its unanimous passage was a significant gesture from the treasury. Law Minister Rana Sanaullah ‘allowed’ the resolution to be presented on the condition that it will not be debated. His remarks showed that though the treasury wanted to express solidarity with the PPP-led federal government, it wanted to avoid any army-bashing rhetoric.

The question is: if public representatives do not want to ‘offend’ the powers that be how and what kind of stand will they take against any ‘undemocratic act’. The law minister has been a direct victim of these ‘undemocratic forces’. Maybe this just shows that no matter how resolute political parties claim to be, they are still shy of openly challenging the establishment.

The PM’s remarks also dominated the conversation in the cafe. One PPP member, who has served a term in the National Assembly, said that the establishment had demanded the president’s resignation over the memo issue. He said that after his return from Dubai, the president had told his close aides that he had refused to resign. The PPP has decided to go down fighting, he said. According to the legislator, the establishment has concluded that the disputed memo was written with the president’s knowledge.

Now, more than ever, the PPP is going to need political support. But the PPP does not have the broad-based support it had enjoyed after the 2008 elections. Having alienated PML-N and Imran Khan’s rising popularity, garnering the support it needs is going to be really difficult.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2011.