- PTI-PML-N chasm over key parliamentary committee
Though the friction and hype, vulgar at times, generated by the 2018 elections and judicial tensions, has eased somewhat into an uneasy calm, the feelings of bitterness still linger. Even slight headway on the political front, achieved after protracted consultations between antagonists, can vanish in the twinkling of an eye, as ingrained mistrust lurking just beneath the veneer of feigned affability, resurfaces. A similar ‘instant’ problem has arisen between ruling PTI and the main opposition party, PML-N, over the appointment of chairman of parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the most powerful national assembly working group, responsible for ensuring transparency through audit of governmental revenues and expenditures, both of previous and present rulers. As is unfailingly familiar, a purely political issue has degenerated into a clash of egos, with rigid positions being adopted on both sides, and the PML-N leadership threatening to pull out of its already accepted chairmanship of nine other NA standing committees, still to be constituted by the Speaker.
As always, there are two sides to this seriously divisive issue, a legal one and an ethical (or rather pragmatic) one. Though the PML-N is insisting on the appointment of its party head and leader of the opposition, Shahbaz Sharif, to the coveted chair, citing recent custom and precedent, the government is not legally bound to give in to this demand. It is true that the 2006 PML-N–PPP Charter of Democracy stipulated that the PAC chairman should be appointed by the leader of the opposition, but actually, leaders of the opposition themselves occupied this pivotal post in the NA, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan during PPP government (2008-13) and his opposite number, Khursheed Shah, in the third PML-N administration (2013-18). The current opinion in PTI is split, with hawks citing ongoing Nawaz Sharif-Shahbaz Sharif NAB cases as causing possible conflict of interest, and moderates more amenable to the PAC chair going to the opposition. Wracked by economic and external pressures, the country is crying out for political unity, hence a senior opposition figure of known integrity, moderation and neutrality, acceptable to the majority, is the only middle of the road, workable solution to the PAC chairman riddle.
