Going for a fall?

Will the PML-N save the PPP and allow it to run a minority government? And for how long?

It is quite clear that the PPP-led coalition has evaporated in the National Assembly. What Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on Sunday in Lahore — that his government won’t fall after the JUI-F and MQM sat on the opposition benches — looked like routine words of self-deception. He is now 12 seats short of a majority, and if rules be observed, President Zardari must ask him to show he has 172 votes in the House.

The PPP persuasion with the MQM has not worked. The JUI-F, too, has brushed aside blandishments. The PML-N says it is not going to bail out the government. The PML-Q says it, too, will not vote to give Mr Gilani the numbers he needs to survive. Outside, the internecine clerical opposition — ‘miraculously’ brought together on the question of the blasphemy law which the government was not even willing to amend — is threatening to make trouble in the streets.

The media has run away with the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority’s oil price hike and will not say that subsidising the latest rise in the global oil price will be more harmful than passing it on to the people whom an all-party opposition will not allow to be taxed under the reformed general sales tax (RGST). People are being interviewed on the hardship they face with high petrol price and gas shortage; and the media will not tell the people that gas has run short because of steep rise in consumption and the depletion of underground gas reserves.

The stage is set for change. The JUI-F, now keen to get rid of Mr Gilani, wants Mr Nawaz Sharif to stand aside and let the government fall. The PML-N has, so far, said that it will not give Mr Gilani the vote to save his skin, but is less sure about in-house change after Gilani. It has the second largest vote in the National Assembly but it is still less than what the PPP has, which means Mr Sharif will head a weaker coalition than even the PPP’s. Today, his party is meeting with him to decide if the PML-N will go for dissolution of the Assembly and gear up for midterm elections.

Deserters have been talking to people they were not wont to talk to in the past, which looks like orchestration. The MQM is talking to the Jamaat-e-Islami; it is also talking to the PML of Pir Pagaro. The JUI-F and MQM are talking to PML-Q to hear Chaudhry Shujaat say he will not throw a lifeline to Gilani. The trend towards toppling is so strong, the PML-N may have to reconsider. Mr Sharif had rebuffed two moves in the past: a move by Pir Pagaro to unite the myriad Muslim Leagues to bring about change of government; and he rebuffed the MQM rather unceremoniously which unleashed a war of words the country had never seen.

Mr Sharif has hinted that the storm gathering against the PPP coalition was a kind of puppet show orchestrated by the establishment that had once ousted him from power. He says he will not be a part of any unconstitutional move to topple the PPP, but what is happening in the country hardly looks unconstitutional. The PPP has been tainted by scandals that no PPP supporter can ignore. Mr Gilani has been making appointments that were unwise, if not disingenuous. Given its flat-footedness, the PPP has attracted some of the opprobrium held over from the past that it did not deserve.

It is decision time for the PML-N. To be more precise, it is time for Nawaz Sharif to move quickly on the path of pragmatism. Does he want midterm elections? He has been ambivalent on the question. The hawks want the PPP out so that they can exploit the current peak of popularity in the gallup polls. Mr Sharif, however, has given evidence of some lateral thinking. Would it be wise to step in the shoes of a PPP under attack from terrorism and saddled with a strained economy?

Governability is at a low ebb. A PML-N government will be no less helpless facing the economic crunch or negotiating peace with al Qaeda, the Baloch separatists and a very hostile Sindh. Will Mr Sharif save the PPP and allow it to run a minority government? And for how long?

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2011.