Joint strategy?
Rashed Rahman
Chairman
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari met Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz at Jati Umra on June 16, 2019
on the latter’s invitation. The two had earlier met in Islamabad at Bilawal’s Iftar dinner. The two young leaders
discussed virtually the whole gamut of issues confronting the opposition and
the country. Not surprisingly, their main focus remained the performance in
office of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government, especially its
economic failures and what Bilawal dubbed a ‘PTIMF budget’ that was tantamount
to ‘economic suicide’. The bottom line for both leaders was that the PTI
government’s ‘time is up’ and the two parties should evolve a joint strategy
for the struggle against the ‘selected’ government both inside and outside
parliament. They also agreed to block the government’s budget and prevent it
being passed.
For this
purpose, it was decided to hold consultations with all political parties,
including the government’s coalition partners who were unhappy with the
incumbents. Chief amongst these is the Balochistan National Party-Mengal
(BNP-M), which has come out openly with the threat to leave the coalition since
the government has made no move towards implementing the six points agreed when
BNP-M joined the coalition. These six points revolve around Balochistan’s
demands to end enforced disappearances, account for those missing, repatriate
the Afghan refugees from the province and ensure outsiders coming to Gwadar
will not have voting rights in the province, along with a host of grievances on
the rights of the province in the federation and its people as citizens of the
state. The PPP has already met BNP-M chief Akhtar Mengal the other day. The
outcome was Mengal’s demand that an agreement on his six points be signed. This
was followed almost immediately by a wooing session from the PTI led by Defence
Minister Parvez Khattak. Not much has emerged so far about that confab.
It should be
recalled that the opposition is planning an All Parties Conference (APC) to be
convened by Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Bilawal and Maryam agreed that the final
decision whether to launch a movement against the government would only be
taken after they had gone back to their own parties for consultations and in
the light of whatever consensus may emerge from the APC. Bilawal spoke to the
media later at Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan’s house, where Aitzaz reportedly cautioned
him to proceed with care in his efforts to forge an understanding with the
PML-N lest the latter use the pressure thus exerted on the government to strike
a ‘deal’ with the establishment. Aitzaz’s harsh views about the PML-N, even
above and beyond the utterings of his own party leaders, are a matter of
record. Nevertheless, there may be a grain of truth in what he says since it is
an open secret that there exist internal differences within the PML-N.
Whereas
incarcerated Nawaz Sharif is for an unbending resistance to the government that
appears hell-bent on targeting the two main opposition parties’ leadership,
Shahbaz Sharif favours a ‘softly, softly’ approach that leaves room for a
compromise with the establishment. With Asif Zardari, Faryal Talpur and Hamza
Shahbaz behind bars and indications other leaders from both parties may follow
in what is turning out to be a ‘season of the long knives’, the room for
compromise is shrinking fast. And with the process of passing of the baton of
leadership to a younger generation visible, it is possible to contemplate a
meeting of minds (tactical at least) that could pit both parties (and others)
against the incumbent government on the barricades.
What lends
credence to this possibility is the tone, tenor and content of the
Bilawal-Maryam discussion. The references against superior judges came into
that purview, with the consensus being that this government was following in
the footsteps of the Musharraf regime in targeting independent minded judges
and that this would not be allowed to pass, even if a fresh lawyers movement
was required for the purpose. The targeting of their parties was one of the
easiest points to agree on between Bilawal and Maryam. Generally, they jointly
castigated the rife human rights violations, media censorship and attacks on
journalists, and expressed the alarm that if this government is allowed to
continue in its fumbling, inept, incompetent manner, the country could end up
being wrecked.
The two young
leaders agreed to revisit the historic Charter of Democracy signed by the late
Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in exile in London in 2006 and update it
according to the evolving situation. It should be recalled that the most cogent
aspect of the Charter of Democracy was the pledge not to be ‘played’ ever again
against each other by the establishment, as had been the case since at least
the 1990s.
Bilawal has
announced a mass contact campaign from June 21, 2019 (his mother’s birthday). This
reflects the PPP’s perception that the waters should be tested at the mass
level before giving a call to the masses to come out against the government. There
is optimism that if the opposition can unite, the judges’ references (if not
dismissed by the Supreme Judicial Council) could mobilise the lawyers, and the
economic hardship imposed on the people by the PTI government, which is likely
to be exacerbated if this budget is passed, will persuade the masses to back an
anti-government drive.
So far so good.
But critics of the opposition’s efforts ask whether it is possible for it to
gain the support of the people merely by critiquing the PTI’s fumbling policies
or whether a transformational (even revolutionary) programme of systemic change
is a sine qua non for a credible mass movement despite the ordinary citizen
groaning under the inflation, unemployment and insecurity unleashed by the PTI
government.
On the answer to
that question may rest our fate.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
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