The Coalition and Its Responsibility
By Misbah U. Azam, PhD
Phoenix, AZ
In a tic-tac-toe game, sometimes an interesting dilemma prevails when one of the players creates the scenario where an opponent cannot prevent him from winning by completing the row, if he cannot win by completing the column. Pakistani politics is nowadays becoming somewhat a tic-tac-toe game, where the crosses and zeros are put by Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif.
So far it seems that on the issues of judges and the President, Asif Zardari could not prevent Nawaz Sharif from assuming a dominant position and Mr. Sharif is winning in one or the other direction. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto it was widely debated that it would be a huge challenge for Zardari to take not only the right steps to properly manipulate the fragile coalition but also to keep his own party intact and not to let forward groups form inside the party.
Initially, it seemed that Mr. Zardari was doing a superb job as a “uniting force” to keep the party and the coalition intact but by his vacillation and wavering on major issues, he is losing the trust of ordinary people.
It’s very unfortunate that after the first 100 days of the new government, the coalition is broken, there is no significant movement on the judges issue, the ruling party is still not presenting a clear picture about its plans for the presidency, its plans about the governors and the attorney general, any well-meaning program to reduce poverty and the price hike, specific plan to deal with the situation in the tribal areas and Baluchistan other than giving the authority to the military chief to go ahead and deal the situation as per his understanding, which really shows the lack of will in the government to take the responsibility on its shoulders. The ruling party only came up with its “constitutional package” which, most senior analysts believe will never get a smooth passage in the parliament.
On the other hand, the other major coalition partner is firmly stuck to a single point agenda of removing Gen. Musharraf from office as if the removal of Musharraf will resolve all threats to the country from both outside and inside. It’s true that the judges issue and the new government’s relationship with Musharraf are very important issues, and these issues should be discussed, and plans be implemented in the interest of Pakistan and the people, but not on the basis of settling personal enmities and rancor.
On February 18, 2008, the people of Pakistan elected the current leadership with the hope that it would work to resolve their long lingering problems. The electorate felt that the worst democracy was better than a good dictatorship. The PPP, PML-N leadership should take the people’s February verdict seriously. They should act with due sanity so that the people do not have second thoughts about democracy and start contemplating to distribute sweets when a dictator overthrows a democratic dispensation.
