At Wednesdays Punjab PPP parliamentary party meeting, chaired by President Asif Ali Zardari himself, it was decided to invite the PML-N to rejoin the government at the Centre, and in case of the latters refusal to do likewise in Punjab.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani - who kept in touch with the PML-N leaders Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif through the recent tension-filled days of Governors rule and the Long March - has been assigned the task of convincing the Sharif brothers to return to the relationship that existed between the two parties during the early post-election period. So far the PML-N is disinclined and says it will continue to support the ruling coalition at the Centre from the outside, preferring to sit on the Opposition benches.
Q League deserters in the Punjab Assembly having gained majority to form a parliamentary party of their own are giving the PML-N new incentives to want to see PPP occupying the Opposition benches. They have queered the pitch in ways that point to newer possibilities for the N League. As it turns out, the Q League has enough strength in the National Assembly as well to help the PML-N attain the status of the largest party in case it merges with N League.
This may set the latter to contemplate a parliamentary coup even at the federal level. It would be normal for the parties to play such power games in normal times. But the sad reality is that the country faces serious challenges on all fronts, and a grave existential threat from extremists operating from our tribal badlands.
The gravity of the threat is not lost on anyone. In fact, Mian Nawaz Sharif himself has repeatedly been saying that no one party can deal with the problems facing the country. Clearly, what the country needs at this point in time is consensus among the political parties, especially the two major ones. No matter how good intentioned the N Leagues decision might be to extend support from the outside, which has been the practice in India for quite sometime, it is not expected to work in our peculiar situation.
Sooner or later, old rivalries will surface and the Opposition, whether in the NA or in the Punjab Assembly, will want to discredit its opponents in government. The two major parties, therefore, must make a conscious effort to overcome their differences in the greater national interest and form consensus governments both at the Centre and in Punjab.
To make that happen, the PPP has to address the N League leaderships concerns. The Prime Ministers good relations with the Sharif brothers alone are unlikely to produce the desired result; he must be able to show progress on the issues of contention. Notably, Nawaz Sharifs one stated reason for getting his party men out of the federal cabinet was the governments reluctance to restore the illegally removed judiciary.
That condition has since been met, albeit under the pressure of street protest. The other issues involving the introduction of 17th constitutional amendment and the re-insertion of infamous 58-2(b) clause in the Constitution by the former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf to strengthen his rule and acquire maximum power as president are in the process of being deleted from the statute book.
The PPP claims that it is committed, as are its other coalition partners, to remove these distortions in the 1973 consensus Constitution. The Prime Minister has been promising to make the necessary changes but Nawaz Sharif is no longer willing to trust promises. Even though the PPP itself is committed to make those changes, its reluctance to recognise the urgency of the situation has undermined its image as a pro-democracy party.
It is pertinent to mention here that reports of the parliamentary party meeting say Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, former PPP Punjab president, severely criticised his partys provincial leaders for the recent problems, accusing them of political mismanagement, which according to him, lent popularity to Nawaz Sharif.
Hopefully, lessons have been learnt from that experience. The PPP must act urgently to restore the 1973 Constitution as it stood in October 1999, prior to General Musharrafs military coup, removing any apprehensions that the PML-N may have to become coalition partner, once again. The two must work jointly to take on the challenges confronting the country.