THE LION ROARS AGAIN

ISLAMABAD: A stop-gap democracy of Pakistan is witnessing historic milestones as Nawaz Sharif is all set to become the first-ever prime minister to vouch for the office for the third record time in the weeks to come.
After collecting the praises from world leaders from Iran, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, London and his saviors after 1999 ouster i.e  the Saudi King, crucial phase of forming a government has already begun.
With a slow Election Commission yet to officially notify all the results, but a media-driven elections and political leadership has already conceded defeats and victories on the very night of elections in Pakistan.
At present the current tally of Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League stand around 128 seats out of 268 openly contested seats in general elections.
Nawaz Sharif himself has won from two constituencies; one from Lahore and another one from Sargodha, wile his brother Shahbaz Sharif has also won a seat of National and one of provincial assembly from Lahore. Therefore, they will have to vacate one of the two seats, especially when Shahbaz Sharif has announced to continue his unfinished job as Punjab chief minister.
Nawaz Sharif’s party will need 137 to have simple majority and form a government on its own for which party leadership had a detailed meeting at Raiwind Palace on late Saturday night. First omens coming out of that meeting is that Nawaz Sharif is not interested in forging any alliances and is still hopeful that he will get the required numbers with the help of independents alone.
Ministries like finance, education and information seems to have already been given a tag names like Ishaq Dar, Ahsan Iqbal and Saad Rafiq or Pervaiz Rashid.
Offer of an alliance from Maulana Fazalur rehman, who telephoned Nawaz Sharif on late Saturday night also came under review in this meeting but is learnt to have been put on the back burner for the time being, informed the sources. “We don’t want any bargainers at this time and are hopeful that we will not have to depend on any crutches,” commented one senior party leader after the meeting.
Simple majority he might get but it is hard to fathom that how Nawaz Sharif will be able to pass the legislation when PPP and its allies are holding majority in the upper house of the senate, observed a pundit. Second major point, which many analysts have been invoking since last night is that how Nawaz Sharif would ensure an all inclusive cabinet to overcome the dilemma that his party is coming to hold federal citadel with a Punjabi vote? Nawaz’s party has done poorly in all other federating units - identical to 2008 results.
Considering the fact that he would not be able to do much to stop PPP from claiming Sindh province and Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf might be a potent front runner in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, many analysts are hoping that Nawaz Sharif would try to live with these realities instead of repeating the Jam Sadiq (1990) or Manzoor Wattoo’s (1993) examples. Both of them maneuvered their way by denying the top office to single largest party in the Sind and Punjab, respectively.

Courtesy Saeed Minhas