Why the PPP needs to call a snap election

PPP has to think twice before deciding to ask for votes in Punjab, if Shahbaz Sharif remains in control there.

This government pretends to be very keen to get two things done by the National Assembly before it finishes its term on March 16, 2013: a) increase in the number of seats allocated to representatives from minority communities via a constitutional amendment and b) entice the large number of tax dodgers to get their money whitened by complying with a grand amnesty scheme, introduced via a duly passed law. With the gloomy looks that half-filled treasury benches generate these days, I can safely predict that the government will miserably fail to move on any of the above stated tasks.

Dr Asim Hussein, an otherwise weighty minister with deep personal relations with the president, rather exposed the pathetic limits of our current rulers in the house Monday evening. Responding to a calling-attention notice, he hardly felt any shame in helplessly admitting that OGRA functions above and beyond anyone’s control. “It does not even follow the law that defines its role and responsibilities.” Instead of helping the government in addressing the issues of gas shortages and theft, it rather projects faulty figures in this regard and public representatives start embarrassing the minister of oil and gas by putting tough questions on the basis of these wrongly stated numbers.

With the sheer intent of appearing minority-friendly, the PML-N can still help the government to amend the constitution to increase the number of seats allocated for non-Muslims in our parliament. But it will do everything to block the passage of the law for drawing more people in the tax net. During their media talks, the active opposition legislators have already dubbed the proposed law as “the money laundering bill.” Some of them have also been claiming in off the record conversations that donor countries and institutions are also not feeling good about the said law, and PML-N has no intention to support the government in defying donor advice.

Little wonder, after correctly reading the opposition mood some high profile ministers have started persuading the President to facilitate holding of the next election, somewhere in Feb-March next year. My sources claim that both Asfandyar Wali and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussein want to see the next elections in the same period. It may sound ironic, but the fact remains that the Punjab chief minister had scuttled the idea of holding early elections by reminding Pakistanis through one of his trusted buddies, Khawaja Asif, that the Punjab Assembly would complete its term on April 18 next year and Shahbaz Sharif was just not ready to suggest its dissolution before the said date.

The prime minister and his loyalists is baffled by ‘the message.’ They correctly guessed that even if the National Assembly was dissolved to facilitate early elections, Shahbaz Sharif would continue to rule Punjab with his hands-on obsession. With apparently a toothless government installed in Islamabad to oversee elections for the national assembly only, the PPP has to think twice before deciding to ask for votes in the most populous province of Pakistan, if Shahbaz Sharif remains in control there.

Two of my very reliable sources have claimed that after finding out the “real game-plan of Shahbaz Sharif, the government began approaching his elder brother through various emissaries.” Ishaq Dar has failed to help the government in this regard and so has a real estate tycoon with canny abilities. In sheer desperation, the government has now approached the potential mediators from the international community.

Without revealing the names of potential mediators, one seasoned politician from an allied party, claimed to me in conspiratorial whispers that some hyperactive “consultants” of a donor agency have been suggesting to the government for the past three weeks that it should go for an early election, “even if Shahbaz Sharif refuses to dissolve his house”. Waiting for May 2013 could prove suicidal for the ruling party candidates in electoral terms; “simply because of the rock bottom our economy is bound to hit by that month.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 18^th, 2012.