Daily Times editorial April 30, 2011

Shifting political landscape

The agreement between the PML-Q and the PPP for the former to join the ruling coalition is all but signed, sealed and delivered. That final step too may not be long in coming, perhaps within the week. The terms of endearment appear to have been settled in a meeting at the presidency between the president and the Chaudrys. Media speculation as to the terms range from the deputy prime minister’s slot for Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, five federal ministries, seven ministers of state, one advisorship with the status of a federal minister, one provincial advisorship each in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, and Mushahid Hussain to replace Hussain Haroon as the permanent representative at the UN. This seems quite a hefty price the PML-Q has extracted, even if one does not take into account moves and rumours that Chaudhry Pervez’s son Moonis Elahi will be let off in the corruption case against him. Also included are seat adjustments between the new ‘friends’ in the next general elections and the Punjab provincial elections (the last meant to hit the PML-N), and the Senate elections in 2012. What does the PML-Q bring to the table? High sounding rhetoric about being not so much interested in ministries as concerned about the state of affairs of the country, which require all parties to pull together in a “national reconciliation government”. The PML-Q is said to have prepared a plan to revive the crippled economy, improve law and order, address the energy crisis, and bring prices of essential goods under control. In addition, President Asif Ali Zardari is said to have asked Chaudhry Shujaat to persuade the JUI-F and the MQM to return to the coalition.
What does the PPP gain from this devil’s bargain between the erstwhile ‘Qatil (Murderer) League (so characterised by the PPP after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination) and the leading party in the coalition? First and foremost, a comprehensive majority in parliament, which safeguards it against any no-confidence move against it, and will be very useful come time to have the budget passed in June. Notable in all this toing and froing is the studied absence of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, said to be estranged from the Chaudrys and keeping himself well away from the whole deal. It may be that once the agreement is finalised, the president and co-chairperson of the PPP will be able to persuade his prime minister of the need for a pragmatic realignment if the PPP-led government is to complete its tenure. That is not to say that there has not been considerable heartburn over this turn in the ranks of both the new coalition partners. Nevertheless, real politik and the exigencies of coalition politics, which promises to be the state of affairs for the foreseeable future, seem to have won the day over the naysayers on both sides.
This turn of events may help to explain the extraordinarily acerbic exchanges over the past few days between the ‘revived, real opposition’, the PML-N, and the PPP in the National Assembly. Could it be that the PML-N feels genuinely threatened by the new alignment, especially in its home turf of Punjab? It may be too early to speculate along this line of thought, but there is no denying that the shifting political landscape proves once again the old adage: there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics. Whether this realignment will help the country’s plight or go down in history as ‘failure piled on top of failure’ can only be settled once the new coalition actually comes into existence and starts functioning. The challenges are indeed immense. The capacity to address them remains to be proved.