The real caretakers are session judges, DCOs and the DPOs

The Pakistan Peoples Party is fully aware of the fact that the mere passage of the 24th amendment in the Senate on Wednesday will not lead to the creation of a new province in southern Punjab. To begin with, before being formally inducted in the Constitution, the same amendment also needs to be adopted by the National Assembly with a two-thirds majority. The ruling alliance does not have the required numbers there. It had bulldozed the 24th amendment in the Senate, only to make some political points.

In the immediate context, the PPP candidates in all Seriaki-speaking constituencies will flaunt the passage of this amendment to hawk their sentimental defiance to “oppressive control by Takht-e-Lahore.” Far more important, however, is to tell the world that even after miserably losing the coming elections, the PPP and its allies will remain crucially relevant in the days to come.

In a House of 104, the government had established to be enjoying the support of 70. Unless approved by both the houses of parliament, you cannot make any law in Pakistan and on its own the PPP is set to stay as the single-largest party in the upper house of parliament, until the end of 2014. Even after mustering the two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, the next government would always need to act friendly with this party. In case of a hung parliament, the same number may turn doubly weighty to negotiate for a hefty share in the coalition government.

The PPP does not intend to stop at showing its ‘Senate-card’. I have it from reliable sources that President Zardari is now actively devising a strategy to block the appointment of a caretaker prime minister from the list of persons announced by Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan at a press conference the other day.

Dr Hafeez Shaikh is terribly wrong in presuming that Zardari might be setting the game for him and thus resigned from the PPP-given seat from the Senate to augment his credentials as a “neutral technocrat.” It is true that various diplomats from the donor countries have been anxiously lobbying for him for the past two weeks. Worriedly referring to the “precarious economic scene of Pakistan”, these diplomats would desperately sell the idea of having a technocrat in command for the next two months.

Like Moeen Qureshi in 1993, we were told, only an economist can take some “bold but unpopular decisions,” during the interim period, to correct things on the economic front and put them on the right path before the constituency-driven politicians are back at the helm. Most politicians that such diplomats had approached vehemently opposed the name of Hafeez Shaikh. The diplomats were too late in promoting the name of Ishrat Hussain as an alternative.

Nawaz Sharif also hastened to announce the “election manifesto” of his party on Thursday. He has revealed it, primarily for the consumption of the panicky diplomats and the national security elite. He simply wanted to tell both these quarters that the PML-N is fully conscious of Pakistan’s economic quandary and well prepared to address it. There was no need to install a government of “honest, able and patriotic technocrats” for a longer term. Let there be elections rather to facilitate Nawaz’s return to the prime minister’s office for another time.

President Zardari is far more focused to ensure the return of a respectable number of PPP nominees to the National Assembly from Punjab and in the same context keeps asking PPP emissaries as to what kind of caretaker arrangement they will get in that province, “after many months of dancing to Chaudhry Nisar’s orders.” So far, they have failed to satisfy him on this count. It is not the Election Commission per se, or the “neutral caretakers” in a province that provides comfort to hardened players of electoral games. The district and session judges, DCO and the DPOs are far more crucial for a constituency-driven politician and the PPP leaders keep complaining that thanks to a dedicated set of hardcore bureaucrats, the PML-N had already set its game in the said context. I would not be surprised, if keeping the ground realities in mind the president in the end decided to grant massive powers of postings and transfers to the Election Commission in the name of ensuring fair polls.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2013.