Rough-housing behoves neither party
The PTI believes it suits it to keep the Panama issue alive throughout the period extending to the general elections due next year. What is more, the PTI is aggressive. It is willing to storm the National Assembly from inside the same way as it tried to do from the outside in 2014. No less combative are the younger leaders of the PML-N. A competition in the display of loyalty to retain a cabinet post or to get one leads them to be seen as pugnacious defenders of the Prime Minister’s honour willing to deliver blow for a blow to PTI’s hotheads. The Pandemonium witnessed on Thursday in the House was bound to happen, all the more so because the Speaker too was keen to stand up and be counted as a party loyalist.
The PTI leadership – which lives in a make-believe world of its own – had pinned all hopes on the SC. Since it had already decided that the Prime Minister was the real owner of the London properties it believed the Supreme Court too would treat it as an open-and-shut case and disqualify Nawaz Sharif on the first hearing. The party leadership is now having second thoughts. It is therefore back to Parliament where it happens to be in minority. The only way to create an impact, believes PTI’s impulsive leadership, is to indulge in fracas.
One had expected the ruling party to act coolly. This failed to happen. The hotheads in the ruling party had already decided to launch a frontal attack. It was therefore just touch-and-go when the proceedings started. Slogans against Nawaz Sharif were reciprocated by slogans against Imran Khan followed by a free-for-all. In case the government was to react similarly to every provocation offered by the opposition, it might not find it possible to run the House. It has to realize that being in power it has it has much more at stake and therefore a greater need to display flexibility.