The name of the game is ‘safe driving’

Nawaz Sharif had invited Syed Khurshid Shah for an exhaustive one-on-one Monday morning. Most parliamentary reporters preferred to presume as if this unscheduled meeting between the prime minister and the opposition leader focused on finding means to deal with post-Mehsud chaos. Nawaz Sharif also appeared as if trying to soften the opposition, feeling furious over the absence of Chaudhy Nisar Ali Khan from a national assembly sitting where he was expected to wind up an already overstretched discussion over the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud by a drone-fired missile.

Two separate sources suggested otherwise and they have proved right when the national assembly passed another resolution to demand new dates for local bodies’ elections during closing hours of its last sitting of the sixth session Tuesday.

Through an earlier resolution that also was passed unanimously, the National Assembly had already requested the Supreme Court to review its decision of ‘enforcing dates’ for holding of local bodies’ polls all across the country. This time around, the matter has been left to the discretion of Election Commission. It has been asked to fix dates ‘as soon as’ it felt ready to conduct these polls.

In short, cutting across the party divide our representatives have firmly ganged up to ensure delay in holding of local bodies’ polls. Instead of making it look like itching for a showdown between the judiciary and the legislator, they certainly acted smart by directly submitting their plea before the Election Commission, considered an autonomous constitutional body.

In the interest of safe driving, one must refrain to speculate about how the apex court will react to a cunning scheme by our political class to manage delay in holding of local bodies’ polls. On their part, however, they would keep working for it. I even continue to hear whispers regarding the possibilities of a “constitutional amendment to check the judicial overreach.” The government surely needs 2/3rd majority in both the houses of parliament to extract such an amendment and that by no means looks like an unattainable task.

Pakistan Peoples Party savors comfortable edge in the senate. The ANP always stands by it like a rock in the house. Once these two parties are on board, the PML-N will hardly see any trouble from the rest of political parties. Things in the national assembly could have been tricky for the ruling party, if it desired amending the constitution. The vocal and crowded PTI benches mostly behave unpredictable in the national assembly. Thanks to Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan’s unrelenting condemnation of the drone attacks, Imran Khan is now kind and forgiving towards the government. He and his die-hard loyalists do not feel so good with the Supreme Court anyway, since it refused to entertain their nonstop noise against the alleged rigging during the general election of May 2013. The government rather the political class in general has a strong hand in trying to assert vis-à-vis the judicial overreach.

And in the given situation, Jamshed Dasti appeared as if abandoned in a lonely corner by fellow legislators when he tried to table a bill to amend the constitution at the outset of the Tuesday sitting. The amendment, he suggested, looked tailor made to facilitate the two-year extension in tenure of the incumbent Chief Justice. But he tried to play solo on a day reserved for private initiatives in legislation without doing the required homework. Not a single voice was heard saying ‘aye’, when he sought permission of the house to move the amendment that simply sought the retirement age of a Supreme Court judge to be extended from 65 to 67 years. Dasti did not feel let down, though, and was soon found delivering a bombastic speech to demand concrete steps for poverty alleviation. Doing so, he also tried to plead for creating a new province for the Seraiki-speaking residents of Southern Punjab. His passionate speech on the said issue failed to move anyone sitting in the house or in the press gallery. All of them vividly remembered his rushing to Raiwind to promise ‘all support’ to Nawaz Sharif after winning two national assembly seats of Muzzafargharh as an independent. No wonder, his brother failed to retain the second seat for him against Noor Rabbani Khar, a formidable player of the electoral game.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2013.