Pakistan: Senate elections

Editorial

SO it seems that the old conspiracy theory is being trotted out again. Talking to reporters in Lahore on Friday, Prime Minister Gilani claimed, “Six months ago, I had pointed out that conspiracies were being hatched to delay Senate elections. Be patient and wait for some days, all these conspiracies will be exposed.” The prime minister didn’t elaborate on these conspiracies but presumably he had his recent travails with the Supreme Court in mind. After all, ‘memogate’ has receded and the PML-N is negotiating with the government to cooperate in the passage of a constitutional amendment in parliament, leaving little else by way of crisis in the country at the moment.

Let’s examine the prime minister’s claim a bit. Six months is a lifetime in politics and back then there were murmurs that the run-up to the Senate elections would prove decisive to this government’s fortunes. At stake is a PPP near-majority in the Upper House, giving it a virtual veto over non-budgetary legislation until 2015. In addition, there is the psychological victory of being a civilian government presiding over elections to both halves of the Senate. For a government committed to constitutional milestones like the completion of tenures, the March Senate election represents a significant victory.

At stake, then, from the PPP’s point of view is a victory that the forces arrayed against it, real and perceived, will not countenance. ‘Memogate’ and the rash of political rallies in the country suggested that there was a real attempt to unseat the government. However, with only weeks left until the Senate elections, the political temperature was seen as subsiding and the government was exuding a renewed sense of confidence. Then came the SC and its threat to charge and convict the prime minister for contempt of court. But is this necessarily part of a grand conspiracy against the PPP or the result of an ill-advised government strategy of responding politically to the president’s legal problems? Even at this stage, the PPP has
simply not presented a cogent legal reason for why the NRO judgment of December 2009 cannot be implemented in its totality. As for the Swiss letter, legal experts here are near unanimous in their opinion that it will not have immediate consequences for the president. Not everything must necessarily be a conspiracy; if the government writes the letter that the SC has demanded it will probably be able to get on with its political agenda.