Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of today, has established itself to be a torchbearer of tolerance and national unity, by quenching the simmering sentiments that were being fomented by certain quarters and opinion-makers in the name of so-called standoff with judiciary but it could not materialize, much to the chagrin of these quarters and, at the same time, much to the satisfaction of Pakistani citizenry.
For sure, the people of Pakistan are yet happier over the government’s patient and discreet moves in the present sensitive situation. Calling it reasonableness of the first order won’t be wrong. Of course, it is more of reasonableness and less of pragmatism that the PPP leadership, especially Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, have demonstrated in the NRO case proceedings of September 18.
All the doomsayers and ill-wishers of the government were taken aback, rather underwent immense embarrassment on hearing the Prime Minister’s positive, assuring reply with Federal Law Minister Farooq H Naek being assigned the task of withdrawing former Attorney-General Malik Qayyum’s earlier letter written to Swiss authorities.
Those who were bent upon painting the government in a negative way have now been made to realize that the government is manned and headed by serious-minded people who don’t believe in confrontation of any kind and are committed to political stability in the country.
In fact, the government has been striving hard from day one to prevent constitutional crisis and chaos. Likewise, it neither wanted to destabilize the system nor wanted to sacrifice its democratically elected Prime Minister. Yet bigger priority was maintaining a fine balance among all the national institutions for which it remained completely respectful and obedient towards judiciary. Not a single word of resentment or complaint was uttered by any PPP leader in this regard, what to talk of going practically into the confrontation mode.
Sometimes, an impression is formed from this cautious style of PPP that the PPP leaders have come out wiser and yet wiser out of the crises and sufferings that they have been braving during the last three to four decades. Certainly, patience of such a high degree just can’t come without sagacity learned by passing through the mill.
This mindset of patience, backed by sound and reasonable action moves, has finally resulted in the emergence of a win-win situation for all. It is indeed going to be immensely beneficial for the whole nation. The nation is rather indebted to the government and also to the Supreme Court for trying to create a middle way.
Before this, the SC has never mentioned about any middle way. This time, the things went well to the advantage of the entire country as one can infer from what the learned SC said on this issue. The learned judges said that they were fully aware of the concerns of the Federation and would give due consideration to them.
The learned judges raised a question as to how many PMs would be removed. As for the middle way, an indication to this effect came from this observation: “The PM only has to issue directives to someone which could be the Law Minister to write a letter”. It is worth mentioning that the SC judges also said, “we recognize that the President has immunity as per the International law” while Mr Justice Asif Saeed Khosa added, “he is also our President”.
These statements from the judges created a new avenue and opened up new vistas subsequent to which the government acted as per the SC’s directives and utilized this middle way option.
The government has actually drawn encouragement from the SC’s recognition of President’s immunity available to him as the head of state under international law. In this manner, the middle road has been opened since the principled and legal standpoint of none of the institutions has been compromised. This is indeed a highly positive development for the depressed nation that was upset over such rifts and standoffs. One thing still remains very disturbing and it is the negative role being played by some sections of the media. When government was in a tight corner and was not writing the letter, media was pressing hard on it but now when the issue is going to be resolved amicably, the same sections of media have started leveling the allegations of backtracking on the government without any reason or rhyme. People now expect of media that it should not try to inflame confrontation and that criticism for the sake of creating confusion must be avoided.
The time for next general elections is not very far off. Now all pivotal sectors of the state, especially media should do its best to create an enabling environment for fair and transparent elections that can become possible only if all the parties including the PPP are provided a level playing field. But if the media continues the media trial of PPP and projects it as a party in total confrontation with the SC, it is denying this level playing field to the PPP. That is being totally unfair to the party of the people at such a juncture when we should be preparing ourselves for installing a fair and upright interim setup in the foreseeable future for holding free and fair elections.
Media must play a supportive and positive role in this regard and should not provoke undue confrontation.