EDITORIAL: It’s barely three quarters since the disputed February election and the PPP-PML(N) marriage of convenience that sidelined Imran Khan and enabled a coalition government is already beginning to unwind. When all reporters were given after the meeting at the Governor’s Annexe in Punjab House in Islamabad was a brief press release, by just one party, with nothing more than names of members from both sides that were present, they knew just what to report to a waiting public with constantly growing political awareness.
That is why news bulletins are speaking of ‘the first visible breach between the two main coalition partners since the formation of the PML-N-led government’. Yet the truth is that while this might have been the first time this ‘breach’ has reached the press, it has been growing for a while. And no matter how much both parties have tried to keep a lid on things, their differences have long since flooded into social media and the public.
It turns out that PPP’s long list of grievances has been growing all the time while PML-N has been throwing empty promises at it. These include reservations regarding its representation in the JCP (Judicial Commission of Pakistan), lack of a level playing field for its workers in Punjab, the ruling party not taking coalition partners on board while making key policy decisions, passing hasty legislation in parliament, internet slowdown risking foreign investment and, especially, very serious concern about the proposed construction of six canals on the Indus River in the Cholistan area – which PPP says would render lands in Sindh “completely barren”. They even drew the attention of PML-N leaders to ongoing protests in parts of Sindh against the project.
Also, given their past, you can be sure that serious differences about resource allocation would also be simmering somewhere beneath the surface and PPP will complain, as it did in days of the PDM (Pakistan Democratic Movement) government, about lack of adequate funds from the Centre. Now it seems Ishaq Dar’s assurance to Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, that the two parties would sit together and sort out their differences, has also been added to the list of broken promises. But this is exactly what to expect when two long-time bitter rivals come together to form government not under some political roadmap but rather a one-point agenda of keeping another out of power by any means necessary. Sooner or later, such arrangements begin to tear at the seams, and these two parties — that have dominated Pakistan’s politics and taken turns persecuting and prosecuting each other for more than three decades — seem to have arrived at that point rather quickly.
Already we’ve reached a point where the old guards in both parties, who’ve been around long enough to see it all in Pakistani politics, will have to take the lead in these negotiations. And it shouldn’t be too difficult to make progress; provided that’s what they intend to do. Everybody knows how the PPP’s top command moved pieces across the board to facilitate PML-N’s government, and why President Zardari later warned that “we know how to make as well as break governments”, so whatever assurances were given to his party will have to be honoured one way or another. Yet new problems will arise, of course, if PPP chooses this moment to over-reach.
But all this remains to be seen. For now, the senior-most leaders in both parties will have to realise that their growing differences spilling out into the open will weaken not just the coalition government, quite naturally, but also the country at a very fragile moment in its history. That is why they must do whatever it takes to keep this marriage of convenience running a while longer.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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