He’s still the MNA from Multan
If the prime minister could actually court conviction for his party, then the speaker’s action the other day was the least she could do.
Not only did she read out the irrelevance of the petition to the prime minister’s conviction, she also expressed concern over the letters that the assistant registrar of the supreme court sent her that detailed the short order and the judgment.
This was what speculators had been suggesting since long. Much before the court had formally ruled that the prime minister had been contemptuous of court, analysts had mapped out the eventualities of the whole affair. One of them, the most probable, was that in case of a conviction, the premier won’t resign and the speaker would sit on any and all petitions seeking the expulsion of the MNA from Multan from the house.
The Speaker’s decision has, predictably, spurred a legal debate. The differing points of view are predictable. She acted, not like the speaker of the house but like an activist of the PPP, said Chaudhry Nisar, the leader of the opposition in the national assembly.
The question now, and this bit hasn’t been mapped out cogently, is where we will go from here. The ball is in the judiciary’s court. Will they see this conviction through to the bitter end?
Some would assume that the courts would want to do that in the face of the supposedly flippant attitude that the premier has shown by not resigning. But that would be too simplistic an assumption. Had the courts wanted to turn the heat up that much, they wouldn’t have opted to convict the premier till the rising of the court. It is clear by now that regardless of what happens, the PPP leadership will milk efficiently any particular situation for whatever it is worth. Deseating the PM would translate into significant political mileage. Even the detractors of the ruling party concede that the PPP can take to this kind of politics like no other political party in the country.
No knowing where the chips will fall from here on.
