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For the fear of not being able to establish its majority, the Imran government could not hold a joint sitting of both the houses of our Parliament Thursday. In sheer panic, the summoning-notification was rather withdrawn, hardly a few hours before holding an already scheduled sitting.
The hasty manner, adopted for postponing the said sitting, clearly exposed inherent vulnerabilities of a government obsessed to rule by employing all possible tools of establishing absolute control since coming into power in August 2018.
Ruling with visible totalitarian obsessions has become almost normal in a highly polarized world of these days. Yet you have to acknowledge that before coming into power, leaders like Modi, Erdogan and Bolsonaro had also established huge populist constituencies by feverishly promoting the hyper-nationalist narratives.
Imran Khan, no doubt, savors a profound charismatic pull and he also had spent more than two decades cultivating a massive support base, mostly comprising passion-driven youth, with his anti-corruption rhetoric. Yet, during the election held in July 2018, the same base failed to furnish a clear and massive majority for his party. A truckload of our so-called electables joined this party, too close to holding the said election.
For the real or imagined reasons, a large number of Pakistanis continue to suspect that winks and nods from powerful quarters of our deep state managed such brazen-looking switching of loyalties to prop Imran Khan to the Prime Minister’s Office. But even after reaching there, he had to rule with a razor-thin majority that essentially relied on support furnished by smaller parties and groups feeling no real affinity with Imran Khan’s loudly pronounced ‘ideology.’
Swayed by ‘can-do’ audacity, however, Imran Khan could not fathom that the real source of the strength and legitimacy of the prime minister in a parliamentary democracy, remain the members of the National Assembly and the Senate, sitting on treasury benches. He took them for granted and preferred to look different than the previous prime ministers, by ostensibly not succumbing to what he perceived, “blackmailing habits of the corrupt and rotten elite.”
Early this year, he had a perfect opportunity to seriously review his self-righteous confidence. After all, in spite of enjoying a clear numerical edge in the national assembly, his party failed to elect Dr Hafeez Sheikh for a Senate seat from Islamabad. He rather returned to his self-comforting cocoon by seeking another vote of confidence from the national assembly after this hugely embarrassing event.
Later, he also ensured that Sadiq Sanjrani should get elected for another term of the Chairman Senate, although he didn’t represent his party and relished his own connections with powers that really matter when it comes to make or break a government.
Prime Minister Imran Khan continued to firmly press for holding of a joint parliamentary sitting to pass a peculiar set of laws. Top among them is the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for polling during the next election. He also wants, almost obsessively, that all Pakistanis, living in foreign countries, should exercise their right to vote through using digital Apps.
Such ideas surely deserve serious consideration, but an overwhelming majority of our people seriously question the haste displayed for ensuring their execution.
We still have at least two more years to reach the next election. Until then, the majority of our people desperately want the government to focus on stemming the nonstop wave of extremely unbearable inflation. With the advent of winter, most consumers are not certain of getting regular supply of gas for their homes, even if willing to pay the budget-upsetting bills for using it.
In this background of mass scale jitters, triggered by the perennial doom and gloom on the economic front, the ideas promoting EVMs and I-Voting rather sound fanciful novelties. For many, they also smack of famously callous remarks, suggesting: “eat cakes if you couldn’t buy the bread.”
Arrogantly disregarding everyday realities, the government rather seemed determined to get a peculiar set of laws of its priority instantly passed by the joint parliamentary sitting. Summoning the desired sitting, it also presumed that all parliamentarians, supporting the government these days, would sheepishly rubberstamp the proposed laws. Even if many of them felt no need to pass these laws in visible haste, the administrative stick of the state would easily bring them on board.
Relying on the bullying muscles of the government, the official handlers of parliamentary business also failed to remember that hardly some weeks ago the administrative stick of the state had completely exposed its limits. A zealous group of religious extremists was able to mobilise a significant number for a march on Islamabad from Lahore. They blocked the flow of traffic on GT Road. Repeated threats of firm handling by the state power totally failed to instill fear among the agitating mob. Eventually, the government had to beg a religious scholar, Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman to employ his clout to assuage and demobilize them.
While succumbing to the fury of the enraged mob, the government could also not anticipate the blowback. It failed to realise that the same would also encourage many of its own parliamentarians to finally assert their own worth. Some of them rather exhibited it pretty loudly and eventually forced the government to abandon the idea of holding the joint parliamentary sitting.
Prime Minister Imran Khan is yet not willing to seriously search for real reasons, igniting a slowly brewing desire for defiance among parliamentarians that have been supporting the government, so far, almost slavishly. He has rather taken the last minute postponement of the scheduled sitting to his heart and forcefully desires to create the feel of total command and control by re-conveying the joint parliamentary sitting, ASAP.
With the same intent, both the houses of our parliament are still being kept ‘in session’. That primarily helps the government to ask the ruling party legislators to stay put in Islamabad. The “suspects” from among them are located and then summoned to the prime minister’s house for having lengthy meetings with Imran Khan. Those who felt neglected and abandoned are now given the opportunity of venting accumulated grievances and seeking some solace. Ongoing sittings of the National Assembly and the Senate, otherwise, have no substantial business to deal with.