Pakistan: PML-N’s faulty track

A REARGUARD action has begun, with the PML-N deploying Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, known for his good relations with PTI chief Imran Khan over the years, to try and appease the PTI. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has reached out to non-politician friends for advice on matters political.

With a National Assembly session scheduled to begin tomorrow, the PTI pressing ahead with rally preparations, the army distancing itself from perceived attempts by the PML-N to drag it onto the PML’N side in the political arena and the country returning to work after Eid, the days ahead will be packed. We will witness a familiar political frenzy and churning of waters that will require all hands on deck for the PML-N and a need to keep sight of the bigger picture and the larger goals.

Yet, it is far from clear that the PML-N leadership, as well as the brain trust it relies on or looks to for navigating political crises, has grasped the present situation properly. In reaching out to Imran Khan and the PTI, the government has made it clear that its foremost concern is to somehow prevent the Aug 14 rally to Islamabad that the PTI is preparing for. That necessarily suggests electoral reforms — the issue that Mr Khan and his party are agitating for — are only an issue to the extent the PTI cares about it, rather than a genuine and serious matter from a systemic and democratic perspective.

Why not, for example, use the start of the next National Assembly session on Monday to have the prime minister himself give a speech that takes ownership of electoral reforms and gives a clear vision of how the PML-N will nudge the electoral system towards greater transparency and fairness? Does the Aug 14 PTI rally matter more or do democracy-enhancing reforms? If it is the former for the PML-N, then surely the party’s leadership is on the wrong track — with either immediate or later consequences to be faced.

Similarly, a report in this newspaper yesterday on a summit of close friends that Prime Minister Sharif convened at his Raiwind residence recently indicates that Mr Sharif is working from an old mould of politics and is perhaps even in self-denial.

If Mr Sharif is waiting for March 2015 when the PML-N’s Senate seat count will more than double, but still fall far short of a majority, it sounds suspiciously like the excuses that executive action was hamstrung under former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and more governance and leadership would be visible after his retirement. That clearly has not happened. And what of the suggestion that somehow external interference, implicitly by the US, is constraining Mr Sharif’s government? It sounds suspiciously like the government is looking for scapegoats rather than undertaking some serious self-scrutiny.