On one hand, the government beams with confidence about the fate of the no-confidence motion, promising to send the opposition back with its tail between its legs, yet on the other, it does what it can to delay proceedings; even if it means getting the speaker of the national assembly to play a blatantly partisan role in the process. Constitutionally, the last day to table the motion in the house was March 22, but even when the session was held three days later, the speaker thought it wise not to include it in the proceedings because of a non-binding tradition that everybody feels should have taken the back seat in light of the seriousness of the matter. Still, the government’s response remains the same: that it has more than the required numbers; it is not shying away from the voting, and the speaker was, and is, well within his rights to stretch the constitutional mandate in this matter.
Now, all attention will turn towards the mega rallies that both government and opposition parties have planned for the next few days. And the fact that the government is completely paralysed and the market is haemorrhaging money because of the uncertainty seems lost on the country’s political elite. All the while the headlines have been full of this confrontation, everybody seems to have missed the news about the economy falling into trouble once again.
The government has been unsuccessful so far in defending its special relief package as well as its latest amnesty scheme before the IMF, which means the next tranche of the bailout program is suspended, and the PM’s flagship programs are flooding the market with money without a corresponding increase in output and driving up prices when inflation is already unbearably high. Understandably, all quarters are waiting for the dust to settle to get back to things that matter.
Whatever happened to Information Minister Fawad Chaudhary’s boast shortly after the opposition had first filed the motion with the national assembly secretariat? Is the government still so confident that it wants a vote right away? And why has the government gone out of its way to add toxicity to the political atmosphere since then?
A no-confidence motion is strictly a constitutional matter, after all. Then, why not get it over and done with sooner, rather than later, so the whole country can find its direction once again? Wasting time like the ruling party is doing is in nobody’s interest, not even its own.
