That cracks that appeared in the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) when Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) refused to play along with other opposition parties when the matter of en masse resignations from assemblies came up apparently run deep. That much has been confirmed by the collective decision of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif and Jamiat Ulema I Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman to move ahead even if PPP choses to disengage itself from the alliance. The maulana’s bitterness was visible when he spoke to the press after being blind sighted by PPP the other day, as we walked away without taking any questions from reporters, precisely because he saw no purpose in dragging the movement along without the resignations to give it the potency that it needs if it is really going to have even an outside chance of sending the government packing.
But it remains to be seen what the other members of the alliance, minus PPP, can really hope to achieve once the cleavage widens even further. Fazal and Nawaz’s surprise is difficult to understand because there were signs from the very beginning that PPP would resist handing in any resignations. Why on earth would it jeopardise its government in Sindh for an initiative that has had very few, if any, chances of success since it took off? That is why former president Asif Zardari has always preferred to engineer whatever change the opposition wants to bring from within the august houses of parliament. And the other parties played along for a while, at least till the Zimni elections and the Senate poll turned out to their liking.
But now, when push has clearly come to shove, the maulana, who officially heads the PDM, feels that it would not be possible to build any more momentum without the resignations. And that is where what little everybody in the opposition had in common, to the point that they were willing to come out on the streets and actually march on the capital, has dissipated. Now the likelihood of the long march has diminished considerably. But, at the risk of repetition, that does not mean that the government can breathe easy just yet. Its biggest threat comes not from a disunited and disgruntled opposition but from the unhappiness of the people. And till prices are high and the economy is struggling, no manner of disunity within PDM will give the government too much to celebrate.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/736284/pdms-future/
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