- Slim chances of forming meaningful anti-PTI platform
JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman is a man on a mission nowadays, his obsession being an All Parties Conference. Since he lost his ‘safe’ constituency seat and his chairmanship of Kashmir parliamentary committee, an unendurable pain of ‘paradise lost’ and melancholic nostalgia have apparently overwhelmed him. Power may or may not corrupt, but loss of power and fear of being marginalised are certainly powerful incentives to indiscrete or impulsive behaviour, and have presently resulted in frenzied attempts to cobble together an opposition bloc, ostensibly to overthrow PTI government in a jiffy and end the misery of living in an unfamiliar political wilderness. But the hoped for prospective ‘fishes’ refuse to take the bait, and the wiles hidden behind an idealistic public-minded agenda, in support of democratic process, and against the government’s dismal economic show, have failed to elicit the expected robust response. Instead a polite rebuff couched in vague language has been the reaction both of PML-N and the PPP.
The main opposition parties are more or less agreed that the July 25 general election was allegedly fake, stolen or hijacked, with a parliamentary committee formed to investigate these grave accusations, and consequently, the incumbent PTI government’s mandate is not fair and legitimate. But aside from this single common premise, seemingly unbridgeable differences abound between them. The most divisive is the mutual mistrust existing between the PML-N and PPP leadership, born of bitter experience, due to which each now shies away from taking a clear joint stance on any pressing national issue, fearing a stab in the back, thankfully only metaphorically, and second, their leader’s complex judicial and pecuniary problems. Nawaz Sharif, enmeshed in legal cases nearing conclusion, is keeping a mysteriously low profile, reportedly unwilling to involve himself in an anti-government movement, while Asif Zardari, with ill-omens of soon being in the same corruption cases boat and verbally inclined towards Fazlur Rehman’s proposed APC, is practically averse to toppling the government, and feinting misleadingly on alleged reversal of 18th Amendment. So, with options left wide open, and a Sharif(s)-Zardari meeting nowhere in sight, it is quite a catch-22 situation for the good maulana.
