A storm in the tea cup: Shafaqna Analysis

by Tauqeer Abbas
130 views

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz on Saturday asked Pakistan Peoples Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to show (the required) numbers before considering the move to oust Prime Minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly. “Tabling a no-confidence motion (against PM Khan in the NA) is an old suggestion of the PPP. However, if Bilawal Bhutto thinks he has (the required) numbers in this regard, he should show them,” said PML-N Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal while addressing a press conference.

After the early days of hitting out at the government and targeting ‘selectors’, the PPP first buckled with a lukewarm response to the resignation issue and is now abandoning the long march idea. Even if the PPP manages to persuade the PML-N on this issue — the chances of which are slim — together the two opposition parties do not have the numbers in the Assembly to successfully pass such a motion without external engineering.  While this may be on paper a more ‘democratic’ way to alter an elected government, the question is that of numbers. The PPP on its own has around 50 MNAs in the National Assembly, well short of the number 170 needed to remove a prime minister from office. And then there are also previous examples.

When Asif Ali Zardari and his allies said that the chairmanship of Sadiq Sanjrani in the Senate would be altered and an opposition candidate put in his place, despite the larger number of senators loyal to the opposition, this move fell through completely. We ask then how precisely the opposition, and notably the PPP, plans to go ahead with this plan. Is there something else afoot that is not yet visible? Such things have happened before in Pakistan. But it is also true that no prime minister in our history has been removed through a no-confidence move in parliament. Also an unsuccessful motion would further strengthen the government’s position and undermine if not decimate the PDM.

Another question is important that if PDM has to remove PM with no confidence motion why was so all the pressure, protests and jalsas were for nothing as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) is clearly in no mood to play along anymore in the grand scheme to march on the capital and force the prime minister to resign. Normally opposition parties would be expected to make such proposals in private, and they did meet recently yet nothing quite like this reached the press, but for one of them to talk like this in public only confirms the doubts that people had about PDM for a while now.

The tide began to turn with the Lahore jalsa, where Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President disappointed all allies by not being able to mobilise masses quite like they expected. And, rather ironically, all this has left JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman – someone who has no stake in the system yet he’s most affected by this breakdown – suddenly with nowhere to turn to. Now PDM needs a new game plan but it’s not immediately clear just what it can do to maintain the alliance and build more pressure on the government.

Shafaqna Pakistan

pakistan.shafaqna.com

 

 

You may also like