- Let the PTI deliver or expose itself
With Zardai, Nawaz Sharif and Fazlur Rehman in Lahore, reports of toeing and froing by the JUI-F leader to bring them together to forge a grand opposition alliance have appeared in the media. Even if Fazlur Rehman succeeds in arranging a meeting between Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, nothing beyond an agreement to jointly take the government to task inside Parliament is likely to emerge.
Soon after the inauguration of the PTI government, the PPP dissociated itself from attempts to form an anti-government alliance suggesting that the party might support the right measures taken by the government and oppose the wrong ones. The PPP and PML-N however agreed to give the ruling party a tough time in Parliament.
As the FIA and NAB started pursuing vigorously the cases against Zardri while Imran Khan’s tone became increasingly strident a shift started to take place in Zardari’s stand. Last week the PPP chief called upon all political parties to unite on one platform to declare that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government is unable to run the country. However he still did not want to go beyond passing a resolution in the NA against the government’s performance.
This has encouraged Fazlur Rehman once again to undertake the mission of forging an alliance to initiate an agitation against PTI’s administration. Fazlur Rehman, who had been in the good books of every government during the past fifteen years, is now like a fish out of water as he has lost his seat in the NA as well as the chair of the Parliament’ Kashmir committee which he had retained for more than a decade. Soon after losing the election he worked hard to persuade the opposition parties to reject the elections and refuse to sit it in the assemblies. No parliamentarian except those belonging to his own party was however willing to lose his hard won seat.
With cases against the PPP and PML-N leaders being pursued by the FIA and NAB with unusual speed Fazlur Rehman believes it is time to sell the idea of a grand alliance once again.
The PPP and PML-N share the JUIF leader’s antipathy against the man who came in from the cold and became the prime minister against all calculations. The leadership of the two parties is however more realistic and therefore unwilling to put everything on stake on a premature agitation. It suits them to bide time till Imran Khan starts becoming unpopular on account of his policies, meanwhile using the Parliament to expose the PTI government. If the so called grand alliance comes into existence, it would remain confined to parliament for long time to come.