The waves of a political tsunami swept through the Punjab Assembly on Friday with the PML(N) getting a well-deserved drubbing for taking the Unification Bloc on board after throwing the PPP out of the Punjab coalition. The ruling party faced a barrage of accusations and allegations amid scenes of pandemonium which marked the days proceedings.
Both mainstream parties have been violating the Charter of Democracy which their top leaderships had signed while in exile. They were seen backtracking from the commitments they had made with each other for strengthening democracy. If the PML(N) is now embracing the turncoats, then the PPP did the same during the Governors Rule in 2009. There have been instances in the past when smaller parties walked out of the ruling coalitions after developing differences with their larger partners. But here it is a different case. The PML(N) leadership decided to show the door to the PPP which was more than willing to be part of the government despite its reservations about the way it was being run: a one-man show with cabinet members having no say in the decision making. But what Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz might have failed to comprehend was that the PPP in the opposition was going to give a tough time to the government than it had faced over the past three years. And the Treasury is not going to get any support from the Unification Bloc whose members were even scared of entering the Assembly Chambers from the main gate. Some of them are reportedly planning to rejoin the PML(Q) not because of its possible realignment with the PPP but to avoid any legal battle.
The practice of encouraging defections is unfortunate and will be seen as a throwback to the politics of the 1990s when political opponents were forced to change loyalties and those who acquiesced were rewarded with perks and privileges The CoD serves as a reminder to its principal signatories that the trend of patronising turncoats will not only discredit the political leadership but can also prove detrimental for an already fragile democracy.
