The strongest challenge to a government in a democracy is from the opposition. But in Pakistan with the Imran Khan government just having completed two years in power with a performance track record that even some cabinet ministers find unsatisfactory, the political opposition seems the least of its worries.
This is unusual because right now the opposition ranks in both houses of the national parliament in terms of numbers are the strongest that they have ever been in the country’s history. So much so that the opposition controls the Senate where it can virtually veto any legislation coming from the government-controlled National Assembly.
And yet, paradoxically, the performance of the opposition has perhaps never been weaker in Pakistan’s history when it comes to giving the government a tough time, especially when the unending stream of excuses the government is providing as if invites throwing punches at it. But no mortal blows have been delivered.
Given its performance, by now the government should have been fighting an existential crisis but is not. It has hitherto been more threatened with internecine warfare and an army of federal and provincial spokespersons at odds with each other rather than an opposition busy defending its leaders embroiled in a controversial accountability exercise in the courts of law and public opinion.
Given its performance, by now the government should have been fighting an existential crisis but is not. It has hitherto been more threatened with internecine warfare and an army of federal and provincial spokespersons at odds with each other rather than an opposition busy defending its leaders embroiled in a controversial accountability exercise in the courts of law and public opinion.
Adnan Rehmat
But all this may be about to change. After taking almost forever in deciding whether they should conduct solo duels with the government or fight it together, the opposition has opted for the latter and has agreed to meet soon in a “multi-party conference” to decide on a collective strategy.
The key opposition parties with both electoral clout and street power are Bilawal Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Shahbaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI). On the agenda of the proposed opposition summit will be how to recreate the biggest opportunity they had fashioned toward the end of 2019 to dislodge the government but which confounding expectations fizzled out with a whimper.
This was when JUI had marshalled an estimated 15,000 followers in Islamabad to provide the street muscle to the electoral power of PPP and PML-N to force Prime Minister Imran Khan to step down. It almost succeeded but for the last-minute betrayal of Shahbaz who opted to accept a reported deal to shield his family from a debilitating accountability drive with his elder brother and three-time prime minister Nawaz and niece Maryam in jail and son Hamza and himself on the verge of being jailed.
The deal did not quite deliver the magnitude of reprieve expected — no legal relief by way of diluting or withdrawal of the corruption cases were forthcoming although Nawaz was given what amounts to an exile-of-sorts abroad and Maryam’s status effectively changed from being jailed in a prison to a virtual house arrest. Shahbaz himself has been spared the prison so far although his son remains in custody.
The newfound consensus has a peculiar trigger — the prime minister. Far from hinting at any deal — originating more from the security establishment than from his government — that would see his government spared an expected opposition onslaught, the prime minister himself continues attacking the opposition instead of the other way round.
It is almost as if the prime minister wants a fight where there is none. One reason why this may be so is to allow him to raise the bogey of “corrupt previous governments of PML-N and PPP” that have supposedly landed the state in such a mess that his government can’t handle it.
With the accountability drive against the opposition parties in tatters after a judge who convicted Nawaz of corruption was dismissed for being compromised and the Supreme Court handed a damning indictment against the National Accountability Bureau and its farcical operations, Khan has no other defense against his own poor performance and hence keeps up a vitriolic diatribe against the opposition.
The Sharifs and the Bhuttos seemingly have had enough of a supposed deal whereby “good behavior” by way of sparing the government has delivered no political dividends. The falling economic fortunes of the country and the fast-eroding popularity of the government — and an unending vendetta in the name of accountability — have convinced PPP and PML-N that Rehman of JUI has been right all along in his demands for a collective strategy to take the fight to the ruling party.
The farce in Pakistan of the government holding the opposition accountable rather than the other way around has all but run its unnatural course. As the opposition seems to have rediscovered its primary mission to hold the government accountable, it will bring back the lost clarity to Pakistani politics — that performance matters, not promise.
*Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
