Renewing their mandate requires the government to woo the opposition
Whether or not giving military courts jurisdiction as well as responsibility to try militants has worked, the PTI is committed to extending their tenure. This is considered essential to implementing the National Action Plan. The military courts, which were given jurisdiction in the aftermath of the Army Public School, Peshawar, massacre, were given this responsibility because the civil courts were supposed to be unable to carry out such trials, and had to be given a breathing space so that they could build capacity. Now there seems to be no mention of capacity building, but the military courts’ tenure ended on Friday, with even the required amendment to the Army Act apparently beyond the PTI’s capacity to legislate, let alone the constitutional amendment also needed.
Even for ordinary legislation, the government lacks a majority in the Senate, and also in the National Assembly of the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional achievement. It is therefore dependent on opposition support for the legislation it wants to pass. However, while the PPP has announced that it opposes this legislation, and the PML-N has maintained a silence which is being interpreted as a refusal to commit. The PML-N, in office both in 2015 when the legislation was first passed, and when it was renewed in 2017, is still smarting from the removal of Mian Nawaz Sharif.
The PTI has not helped matters by making the task of Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi almost impossible. Instead of jumping himself into the fray, Prime Minister Imran Khan has delegated the task of building the needed support to Mr Qureshi. At the same time, there have been other pinpricks delivered by the government, such as the failure of the Prime Minister to engage in meaningful consultation with the Leader of the Opposition about filling Election Commission vacancies, or the NAB’s grilling of the PPP Co-chairmen.
The PTI should realise that governing means winning friends and influencing people, rather than finding corruption alone. There is a certain amount of give-and-take, and government should understand that it cannot force the opposition to give it the popular mandate it failed to get from the electorate. The PTI has shown that it is not above compromise, as when it awarded party tickets to electables. It will have to do something similar to get the legislation it wants through.
