TAKING U-TURNS CAN BE DANGEROUS, MR PRIME MINISTER

Mahtab Bashir

Islamabad

mahtabbashir@gmail.com

03335363248

         PM Imran Khan’s parrot-like rhetoric ‘No NRO’ or ‘Kisi Ko Nahi Choron Ga’ yesterday and today has somehow cemented the belief about him as being ‘intoxicated’. But what about hundreds of thousands of those ‘non-intoxicated’ audience who has been clapping on his daze statement of mind (statement). (English translation of an Urdu tweet by this scribe).   

The kind of political atmosphere that has developed since PTI’s rise to prominence, not just to power, is bad for just about everything and everybody for a variety of reasons. It does nobody any favours, least of all the government itself, when the prime minister speaks in a manner that he did while inaugurating a CPEC-related motorway project (Havelian-Mansehra Section of Hazara Motorway) on Monday and Mianwali on inaugurating several mega projects on Friday.

Since the moment was about projects and roads, and especially since the Chinese ambassador was reportedly in attendance, one expected to be spared the usual “No NRO” speech that the nation is treated to every time the prime minister makes an outing. Yet not only was there a lot of “No NRO,” he also chewed into the opposition a lot more than usual. And nobody was laughing, except senior government officials eager to please the prime minister perhaps, when Imran Khan mimicked Bilawal Bhutto’s Urdu accent. Such antics hardly harm the opposition, especially when everybody is so used to hearing the same remarks over and over again. If anything, Bilawal has been enjoying a wave of social media sympathy since immediately after Imran’s speech.

The PTI and its Prime Minister is disturbed at former PM Nawaz Sharif’s departure for treatment abroad after repeated assertions by Imran Khan not to give an NRO to anyone. The self-righteous PM put the responsibility on the court and blamed the judiciary for maintaining dual standards of justice, one for the powerful and the other for the powerless. He demanded that the judiciary restore public trust in itself.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, did well to set the record straight, saying the permission to Sharif to travel abroad was given by the PTI government itself rather than any court. The PM needs to make amends for his remarks. Later, he sounded skeptical about the veracity of medical reports on the health of Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, saying he was shocked to see the way the former premier ran up the stairs of the air ambulance. “After seeing him going up the plane stairs, I once again went through the medical reports that suggested he has heart problem, his kidneys are also not functioning properly and that he is a diabetic,” Khan told a gathering in his hometown.

Khan gave undertakings to alliance partners which were difficult to fulfill. Now, each one is asking for its pound of flesh. The MQM wants the fulfilment of huge financial commitments besides taking it into confidence in policymaking. The PML-Q leadership sought a humane treatment for Mr Sharif. The Chaudhries also expressed reservations about the ruling party’s performance, maintaining that if the government failed to undertake course rectification, none would be willing to become Prime Minister within a few months. The GDA complained that the PM was ignoring Sindh. The allies are reminding Khan that he is running the country with a wafer thin majority.

Distresses in the case of the PTI are coming not as single spies but in battalions. The NAB has suddenly felt the need to ensure that accountability is not seen to be one-sided and that this requires looking into the cases of leaders who had been in power for the last 12 months. The ECP, which had allowed the PTI’s foreign assets case linger on for years, has decided to hear it on day-to-day basis.

This ought to have been clear to almost anybody yet, somehow, such facts continue to dodge the prime minister as well as his many special advisors. And three, and perhaps most importantly, such rhetoric no doubt further alienates the opposition, on top of the dozens of arrests and corruption cases of course, and you don’t have to be prime minister to understand just what kind of strain that can put on the process of legislation in Parliament. So ordinary people, whose interests governments are primarily meant to serve through effective legislation, become the biggest losers.

Only very recently, the government had to withdraw as many as 11 presidential ordinances, which it muscled through the House, when the opposition threatened a no-confidence motion against the deputy speaker. How does the government expect this particular, rare example of reconciliation in the national assembly to play out now? Already PTI’s performance is not much to write home about in areas that really matter. Foreign relations stand more or less where PML-N left them, especially the matter getting Uncle Sam to resume the free aid, and the less said about the economy the better. If, somewhat correctly, the finance and foreign ministries are hamstrung because of the rot they inherited, what is the excuse about failure to legislate?

The only way for the PTI to complete its tenure is to seek the opposition’s support. The mainstream opposition wants Mr Khan not because it likes him, but because it needs him to keep the system on rails. They want electoral reforms, NAB reforms and a third tenure for an elected government leading to a smooth transition of power. For this Imran Khan will have to tone down his rhetoric, treat opposition leaders decently and develop working relations with the opposition.

Eventually, surely, the government will realise that taking the opposition along is an essential requirement of representative government. But the longer it takes, the more it will paralyse the whole system. And, as always, the common man will continue to pay the price for a direction-less government trying to find its feet.