Instead of striking when the iron is hot, representatives sit cold

Shahbaz can continue to head the Punjab government, even after a caretaker government is put in place in Islamabad.

ISLAMABAD:

Driving towards the National Assembly Monday evening, I was all set to suffer a long spell of bombastic speeches and juvenile point-scoring from our ‘elected representatives’ because that is precisely what they had done while discussing the mass killings of Hazaras in Quetta last month. Their reaction to the Abbas Town tragedy in Karachi the other day was not any different either. Forgive me, therefore, for feeling relieved when the house was adjourned after offering Fateha for the departed souls of two MNAs, Mehrunnisa Afridi and Ghulam Arabi Khar.

The early adjournment helped me engage some leading players of power games from both the ruling and opposition parties with some questions. All of them anxiously anticipated that until the general elections, the wide-scale killings in all major cities of Pakistan would increase alarmingly. None of them had any solutions, however, and all of them seemed to be heading for the next election with this fatalistic outlook.

They were not even willing to consider the idea that instead of looking for dummies to warm ministerial seats in the caretaker set-up, both the opposition and the ruling parties should be looking for people with sufficient administrative experience to ensure as much peace as possible during the weeks to come. The constant talk of a long-term government of able, patriotic and honest patriots wearies them.

Instead of seeking ways to ensure relatively peaceful elections by formally sitting with the government, the Pakistan Muslim League-N continues to be firmly hooked to the idea of getting an interim prime minister of its choice.

The government emissaries, reliable sources revealed, have clearly been told by Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan that Shahbaz Sharif would not ask for the dissolution of the Punjab Assembly before April 8, if the PML-N does not get a caretaker prime minister from its list of nominees.

There is no constitutional provision that enjoins that polls for the national and the provincial assemblies must be held on the same day. We were merely following this tradition since 1970 without it having any legal cover. According to the literal interpretation of the constitution, Shahbaz Sharif can thus continue to head the Punjab government, even after a caretaker government is put in place in Islamabad with the specific purpose of holding elections for the next National Assembly.

In short, the PML-N will get more time and a free rein to strengthen and expand its base in the most populous province of Pakistan, if the government does not oblige when it comes to the selection of the caretaker PM. Nawaz Sharif’s nominees in Punjab will ride the crest of provincial government patronage while campaigning for the National Assembly polls, which would need to be held before May 16 if the house was dissolved on March 16.

The Pakistan Peoples Party leaders are clueless about how to react to this PML-N strategy. Hoping for the best seems to be their obvious option. They were even not sure when the Balochistan Assembly would be restored to help its chief minister ask for fresh election by advising the dissolution of the house led by him. Rather, the ‘suspended’

Raisani, I was told, was now playing hard to get with the PPP leaders, saying that once restored he would not resign until completing his “tenure a la Shahbaz Sharif”.

So far, only the chief ministers of Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are willing to dissolve their assemblies with the National Assembly on March 16, thereby making it possible to hold elections there and in Islamabad on the same day.

The bully Shahbaz Sharif and murky status of the Balochistan government can generate a plethora of X factors, but no one is discussing them in the media. Most politicians and commentators are complacently taking it for granted that the elections for the National and the four provincial assemblies will be held on the same day.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 5^th, 2013.