ISLAMABAD – Teetering on the edge of a very uncertain future, the PPP-led coalition government saw off the year 2010 on a rather gloomier note it may never have imagined to harp upon. While, hoping against hope, the PPP’s easy-going leadership was dropping hints of winning back JUI-F’s mercurial Maulana Fazlur Rehman,
the deepest cut came from Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) that now hangs Damocles’ sword over fragile coalition’s head.Internal bickering, rows over capturing lucrative ministries, corruption allegations, regional interests and mudslinging against each other turned the relationship between all the coalition partners more than bitter.
The strange bedfellows as they were in their very making, the coalition partners found it really hard to continue with their ‘marriages of convenience’ despite making many a compromise at the cost of what they claimed their ‘principled’ stances on so-called national issues.
While the PPP and MQM are at daggers drawn over gaining political foothold in interior and urban Sindh, the ANP and MQM accuse one another of their involvement in target killings in Karachi. Similarly JUI-F and the ANP are fighting to gain political influence in troubled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.
As the government remained involved in reconciling its allies, MQM and JUI-F, its biggest failure was to develop a consensus on the contentious RGST Bill. However, through US influence, the government was at last successful in winning 9-month deferment. The passage of 19th Constitutional Amendment was however one of government’s major achievements.
With MQM at the daggers drawn with ANP, the Zardari-led PPP could only make tall claims of its achievements, showing nothing on the ground or even in black and white. Meanwhile, the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has set a condition for reconciliation i.e. to oust Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani – another difficult task for President Zardari to do.
Even the so-called independent group of MNAs from federally administered tribal areas (FATA) also started blackmailing the PPP soon after tabling of the controversial RGST Bill 2010 in the National Assembly.
On December 14, the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman announced his decision to quit the coalition government after the prime minister sacked Senator Azam Khan Swati as Minister for Information Technology following his repeated assertions of the alleged corruption by some ministers – especially (now sacked)minister for religious affairs Hamid Saeed Kazmi.
As the PPP leadership was carving out a strategy to woo Maulana, the MQM followed the suite adopted by the JUI-F and announced resignations of its ministers, Dr Farooq Sattar and Senator Babar Ghauri, from the federal cabinet on December 27.
A government source told Pakistan Today that both the coalition partners had parted ways due to ‘faulty decision-making, flawed strategies’ carved out by an ‘arrogant’ presidency with an ‘intent to corner both MQM and the JUI-F’.
“When a strategy backfires, the ‘strategists’, who are not willing to shun their flawed approaches, have to bear the embarrassment of going from pillar to post to woo their estranged coalition partners,” observed the source.
The gulf between the PPP and its coalition partners, MQM and JUI-F, widened due to the failure of its political strategy within their respective constituencies. Political analysts see the bickering between the PPP and the MQM not as a result of furious statements by few PPP legislators. Rather, they say, the actual reason is that the PPP is taking steps to minimise the influence of the MQM in Sindh Province.
Keeping in view the achievements of the MQM district governments in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur, the Sindh government quietly restored the commissionerate system to replace the district government system despite making commitments against the same.
A JUI-F source said the party was against any military operation in North Waziristan by the US. “That’s why we left the treasury benches,” he added. Moreover, he said, the unprecedented PPP’s support to the ANP, the major opponent of the JUI-F in Khyber Pakhtunmkhwa, also made Mualana furious and he opted to give a jolt to the government.
