Churlish behaviour
Prime Minister Imran Khan needs to revisit some aspects of his personality and behaviour after ascending to the highest elected executive office in the land. The 2018 general elections threw up Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) governments at the Centre, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Balochistan’s coalition government is tilted towards the Centre/PTI. Sindh therefore was the only province that elected an opposition party government, that of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Relations between the Centre and Sindh have been tense ever since. While the PPP Sindh government is within its constitutional and political rights to demand that the Centre not interfere in its affairs under our constitutional construct, particularly after the 18thAmendment, it has a lot to answer for in terms of governance in Sindh, particularly where Karachi’s long standing (and arguably incrementally worsening) problems are concerned. The conclusion is hard to resist that the Centre has been attempting to muscle in to what is the Sindh government’s writ on the basis of its perceived and real failures. This apprehension has been voiced by PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari too the other day. It would be unwise and impolitic to attempt to bypass the Sindh government in these or any other matters. Things have unfortunately reached such a pass that when Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Karachi the other day, the Sindh government was not informed of his plans, time of arrival, etc. The obvious result was that Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah was not at the airport to receive the prime minister. To add to this breach of protocol, Prime Minister Imran Khan snubbed Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah by not meeting him and instead holding parleys with the heavyweights of the Sindh opposition Grand Democratic Alliance. This smacked of political partisanship and rudeness, and seems inappropriate on the touchstone of institutional and constitutional propriety, the interests of the federation, and democratic and parliamentary conventions. Meeting the opposition Grand Democratic Alliance and not the elected Chief Minister further added insult to injury.
Prime Minister Imran Khan comes across in his public persona and attitudes as dismissive of the opposition generally, whom he and his government and party never tire of castigating with allegations of corruption. This has had the unintended effect of colouring the National Accountability Bureau’s drive against opposition leaders as politically partisan if not a witch-hunt. The result is extreme political polarisation in the country, a situation not conducive to running a federal democratic parliamentary system, whose boundaries, limits, conventions and culture are being routinely violated by the prime minister and his government. The feeling amongst the Sindh government ministers and party people is of their province being under siege by the Centre. Whether one likes the PPP or not, the irreducible fact remains that the people of Sindh have elected its government overwhelmingly once again. That mandate deserves respect. This does not imply that the workings of the Sindh government cannot be criticised. It is simply that whereas the Sindh opposition in the shape of the Grand Democratic Alliance is at liberty to play its role as a parliamentary opposition, elevating it to a political ‘partner’ while relegating the head of the elected Sindh government to a virtual pariah leaves a bad taste in the mouth. If Prime Minister Imran Khan, the federal government and the PTI want to change the government in Sindh, they should refrain from acts and attitudes that smell of extra-parliamentary means and rely only on the electorate’s mandate, as any democratic dispensation enjoins.
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