Prime Minister Imran Khan clearly believes in the old adage that a good offence is the best defence. And he’s also pretty much made up his mind to defeat the no-confidence motion before the votes are cast. Yet his preferred method of avoiding floor crossing by his own party members, which is to have the speaker of the house disqualify them before they are able to vote, risks disturbing legal and constitutional fault lines that could plunge the entire system into very serious disarray for a very long time. And considering what is at stake, it is astonishing that nobody from within the ruling party has yet tried to offer some sensible advice to its senior leadership. Rather, they seem in some sort of competition to appear more loyal than the king, so to speak, and they don’t mind crossing boundaries of acceptable parliamentary behaviour to get on the right side of their captain at the moment.
It’s also very regrettable how the predominant political debate has become very toxic. It almost beggars belief that the prime minister of the country is setting the standard in lowering the quality of the larger debate by making it personal as well as abusive, which is simply unacceptable. And it’s no surprise that it’s now drawing similar responses from the opposition. By his own actions, therefore, the prime minister risks reinforcing the impression, duly amplified by the opposition, that he’s growing frustrated as “he’s losing his grip on power”.
Whatever his preferences, the PM certainly does not seem to have much faith in another old political tradition; that, when push comes to shove, it’s advisable to posture to live and fight another day, since going down in flames might capture popular attention but it achieves nothing intrinsic at the end of the day. Besides, in times of crises it is the responsibility and indeed the duty of whichever party is in power to take the lead in diffusing the situation.
The way Pakistan’s political elite is behaving in the wake of the no-confidence motion against the PM, especially the ruling party, is not acceptable and it will certainly have consequences.
