- Ill-fated PTI operation to topple Sindh government crashes
The federal government’s action of placing 172 people, including PPP’s top brass and its sitting Sindh chief minister, on the controversial, vaguely-formulated Exit Control List has boomeranged badly, exposing PTI’s two troublesome limitations, its vulnerable razor-thin majority in the Centre which it is always anxious to bolster, and its leadership’s flawed decision-making on sensitive issues, usually hawkish, made in indecent haste, and seemingly blissfully heedless of any hurtful consequences. A combination of these complaints has again landed the PTI in hot waters, this time with an extremely upset, to put it mildly, two-member apex court bench. In the absence of the latter’s sanction, relying on as yet unsubstantiated material contained in a letter forwarded by the Joint Investigation Committee probing fictitious accounts in Sindh, it launched an ambitious crash programme of forcing the Sindh chief minister’s resignation, amid irresponsible talk of Governor’s Rule, forming a ‘forward bloc’ within the ambushed, caught-off-guard PPP and moving ‘no-confidence motion’ against the CM.
On Monday’s hearing, the CJP’s vigorous comments against these destabilising and unconstitutional steps sent the ruling party into hasty, headlong retreat on the Sindh front. The top judge reprimanded the JIT head for exceeding his mandate which in no way involved recommendations to the government on ECL listing of individuals without court consent, cautioned that imposition of Governor’s Rule could be nullified in a minute, and ordered the minister of state for interior for delisting by cabinet of the 172 persons put on ECL. No ‘hasty decision’ to dislodge the Sindh provincial government, no derailment of democracy, everything by the green book (the Constitution) was the robust message. The PTI leadership was rudely jolted back from the twilight zone of unreality, it cancelled the two-day Karachi tour of its troubleshooter-in-chief, the federal information minister, who was supposed to spearhead the starry-eyed agenda of overthrowing the Sindh government. The PPP, emboldened by this development, in turn threatened to overthrow the federal government and demanded resignation of chief minister of PTI-ruled Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. But the PPP should not go overboard in its strident protestations, as there is otherwise reportedly some pretty explosive stuff contained in the JIT report, apparently fit for NAB references.
