After shouting hoarse, PML-N in business-as-usual mode

Desultory, inconsistent behavior of PML-N forced many to feel that party had turned pathetically rudderless.

The perennial confusion within the PML-N ranks fully came into the open Tuesday with all the ingredients of an absurdly staged farce. More than a month ago, the main opposition party had publicly declared that it would not allow the ‘convicted prime minister’ to enter the national assembly and take his seat there after being sentenced by the Supreme Court. Disregarding their threatening claims, Gilani continued coming to the house in almost the usual manner. The defiant shouts and rowdy scenes created by the opposition members during his presence in the house never frightened him.

After clearly losing the first round, the opposition then resorted to the tactics of disrupting the house proceedings through ear-piercing shouts of “go-Gilani-go” with or without his presence in the house. Instead of going anywhere, though, Gilani asked his finance minister to finalise and present the next year’s budget. In spite of all the noise stirred by the opposition during the sitting of June 1, the government did pass through the stage of budget presentation.

After due presentation of the budgetary proposals, it became the exclusive burden of the PML-N to grope for a strategy to deal with general discussion on them. As the opposition leader, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had the undeniable right to open the debate by delivering an exhaustive speech focusing on exposing and blasting this government’s economic policies and fiscal management. The angry Rajput from Chakrai let that opportunity slip with visible indifference. Instead of him, an Ivy League trained spin-doctor of the PML-N, Ahsan Iqbal, delivered the opening speech to present his party’s position on budgetary proposals. Instead of shaming and shaking the government, his speech mostly induced yawns.

The PML-N legislators privately told us that they had decided to depute one of their star orators to make a lynching speech on each day of the general discussion before leading the rest of opposition members to walk out of the house while chanting slogans against the government. This strategy made sense. Yet the PML-N members suddenly started staying out of the house for no apparently valid reason. Off and on, they would walk in the house, too close to the lunch break, to chant slogans against the government for some minutes.

The desultory and inconsistent behavior of the PML-N forced many to feel as if the largest opposition party of this country had turned pathetically rudderless. As if to negate the said feeling, the PML-N staged a road show Monday. Although President Zardari had been staying put in Karachi since returning from China, they angrily tried to ‘gatecrash’ into his office with chants of “go Zardari go.” After the display of such a “do or die show” by them, we journalists were preparing to witness a more vigorous action from their benches during the assembly proceedings Tuesday. They shocked us all, however, with a perfectly tamed and orderly behavior.

With an impressive number sitting on its benches, none of the the PML-N members even cared to react to a deliberately provocative speech made by a PPP hawk, Nadeem Afzal Chann. He slyly named some opposition members to clearly insinuate that after staging “the rowdy scenes for public consumption”, they start visiting some ministers’ offices and homes to extract favours and state patronage.

General (retd) Qadir calmly took the floor when Chann had finished. He is a PML-N MNA from Balochistan and before starting the speech requested the chair to grant him at least 50 minutes. He “deserved more time anyway to speak for the abandoned people of Balochistan.” Qadir was allowed to speak and speak without adding anything new or startling regarding whatever we already know about the frighteningly chaotic happenings in his province. Without creating any impact, Qadir’s speech in the house strongly suggested, however, that the PML-N was back in the national assembly in business-as-usual a mode. And by switching to this mode the PML-N seemed pathetically clueless when it came to making moves on political chessboard of this country.

A relatively dispassionate but hardcore loyalist of Nawaz Sharif frankly admitted to me with the request of not being named that his leader appeared clueless these days for the fear of two Ks. When forced to explain, he said, “Mian Sahib continues to distrust Khakis and he is too weary of the launch and rise of Imran Khan. We can conclude, therefore, that he and his party feel overwhelmed by a double-K syndrome. We (the PML-N) will not be able to put our act together until finding some way to deal with this syndrome.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2012.