Daily Times Editorial Nov 15, 2013

KP coalition splinters On Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan’s advice, the PTI’s alliance with Aftab Sherpao’s Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) has been ended. There were rumblings of trouble for some weeks. The startling development reportedly followed warnings to two QWP ministers allegedly involved in corruption, to desist. These warnings did not sit well with the QWP, a coalition partner in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) provincial government. Senior Minister Sikandar Sherpao and other QWP ministers stopped attending cabinet meetings and their 10 MPAs boycotted the Assembly. Imran Khan has said that his party was given a mandate in the May 2013 elections on a platform of opposing corruption, and therefore the PTI would not tolerate any partner who indulged in, or turned a blind eye to corrupt practices. In the same breath he praised his Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) coalition partner’s ministers for exemplary adherence to probity and the KP government’s anti-corruption stance. The QWP has reacted angrily to these developments. They claim they were never informed of any concrete charges of corruption against their ministers. Had the PTI so informed, they assert, they themselves would have taken action against the ministers if the charges against them were proved. Under the circumstances, their ministers were dismissed without a hearing or opportunity to clear their name, the QWP stated. A press conference was planned y the QWP at the time of writing these lines, in which Sikandar Sherpao and other leaders promised to expose the PTI’s own ministers’ misdeeds and corruption. Whether there is any weight in this riposte or it is merely a retaliatory move will only become clear with time. QWP spokesman Tariq Khan attempted to link the breakdown in relations with the QWP’s principled stand on not attempting to disrupt NATO supplies as demanded by the PTI because this was the prerogative constitutionally of only the federal government. The PTI now stands accused of not acting against its own ministers’ alleged corruption to set an example before dismissing the QWP ministers and expelling the party from the coalition. However, the PTI has removed one of its own ministers who was disqualified by the Supreme Court (SC) for holding a fake degree. The move against the QWP has evoked demands that the PTI put its own house in order by investigating the alleged corruption of its own ministers. In a house of 124 members in the provincial Assembly, the PTI still commands 53 seats, the JI eight, Awami Jamhuri Ittehad Pakistan five. These coalition partners along with two independents gives the incumbent KP government 68 seats, a majority, but just how comfortable is not clear. Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI-F and the PML-N are waiting in the wings. That would be a new turn for the books since the PML-N had turned down the JUI-F’s offer after the elections to form a coalition government instead of the PTI’s. Speculation swirls around whether the redoubtable Maulana will now see this splintering of the PTI-led coalition as his best chance since the elections of fulfilling his wish. Imran Khan and the PTI have put corruption centre-stage in their election campaign and after. What is surprising therefore is that the PTI did not see fit to take into account the reputation of Aftab Sherpao when he was chief minister of KP before entering into a coalition with his party. That not only smacked of the usual expediency in forming coalition governments by throwing moral imperatives to the wind in favour of garnering the necessary numbers, it may also have owed something to CM Khattak’s long standing relationship with Aftab Sherpao, dating back to when they collaborated in 1994 to remove the PML-N’s government in KP and as result of which, Aftab Sherpao was elevated to CM. Simply to recount this background is sufficient to bring home the expedient and shifting nature of politics and political alliances in our political culture, a tendency of long standing but which appears to be alive and kicking even today. The KP government may be able to ride out this storm, but the episode has certainly cast the PTI itself in a less than savoury light for ‘cavorting’ with what they now call corrupt elements.