Daily Times

After Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, the politician who has been most benefited by the general elections 2013 is none other than Sheikh Rashid Ahmed of the Awami Muslim League (AML). With that, the media’s darling and TV talk shows’ spice, Sheikh Rashid, is back in parliament. Sheikh Rashid contesting the election from NA-55 (Rawalpindi) had become successful in forging an electoral alliance with Khan who was contesting the election from NA-56 (Rawalpindi). Both supported each other to ensure their mutual survival. Now, Khan has declared to retain the seat from NA-56. Certainly, the vicinity will help their relationship grow further.

While Shafqat Mahmood from NA-126 (Lahore) is poised to be Khan’s right hand on the opposition benches of parliament, Rashid may prove his left hand. This situation will pose two challenges to Khan: first, how to balance his right and left hands against each other; and second, how to use the available right-left combination to achieve parliamentary objectives. However, one thing is sure: Khan is going to become Rashid’s immediate boss. Nevertheless, Rashid’s former boss, General (retired) Pervez Musharraf, has still been waiting for the revenge of Article 6. General Musharraf’s case of abrogation of the constitution on November 3, 2007, would be sent to parliament to initiate legal proceedings against him. From the opposition benches, how Rashid and Khan respond to that will be a scene to watch. General Musharraf must be ruing the day he believed in his popularity displayed on Facebook and Twitter.

Rashid has an interesting knack of becoming a blue-eyed boy of the army. One can, therefore, bet that with his presence in parliament in the morning and on TV talk shows in the evening, threats to democracy will be heard such as if the sitting government does (not do) this and that, ‘I am hearing the thud of military boots marching towards parliament.’ Certainly, in the electoral success of Rashid, the army has secured a spokesman who is ever ready to play second fiddle to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), whether asked or not.

The clairvoyant sense of Rashid failed to presage the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) against over-reliance on sloganeering (that when the PTI comes to power, it will do this and that). The PTI was thinking of sweeping the general elections as the late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) did in 1970 when the PPP also used sloganeering to grab the attention of voters. That repeat of history could not happen this time because of several reasons of time and circumstances. For instance, at that time, socialism was emerging as a new magnet that was cashed in on by Bhutto to found his party and sell socialist slogans to people, especially the downtrodden. On the contrary, there has emerged no new ideology in recent times that could be used by Khan to woo voters. The anti-corruption slogans raised by the PTI also failed to stir voters in its favour because the higher judiciary was already active against corruption. In the context of Punjab, it was the performance of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) that paid him electoral dividends. The slogan-based appeal of the PTI could not counterbalance the post-2008 performance of the PML-N in Punjab. The best time for banking on the strength of sloganeering was the general elections of 2008, which were boycotted by the PTI. Nevertheless, sloganeering did work in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), where the pledge to strike down drones took precedence over everything else.

About the fate of the PTI, one question is this: can the PTI become a federal party? However, another question is this: will the destiny of the PTI be similar to that of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI)? The answer to both questions is this: in order to be a federal party and circumvent the fate of the JI, the PTI needs to perform (and prove its worth) in the constituencies under its sway.

However, by opting for sitting on the opposition benches in the Centre, the PTI has lost a vital opportunity of learning the way the federal government is run, necessary legislation is done and federal constituencies are administered. The issue of performance is intertwined with that. If the PTI had joined the central government, managed to find a few ministries to run and performed both in the ministries and in its electoral constituencies especially in Punjab, the PTI would have been in a better position to demand more seats from the people in the general elections 2018. Apparently, the PTI has selected the itinerary of agitation and antagonism. The PTI thinks that by criticising the PML-N, it can raise its political stature. In this regard, general elections 2013 proved the PTI wrong. If the PML-N performs in the Centre as it did in Punjab, the future of the PTI will be doomed.

The PTI must learn from the fate of the JI, which is strong in street agitation but has been shunned by the electorate. One can foresee that the PTI will be vociferously vocal against the PML-N in parliament on drone strikes, which may not be halted soon owing to certain reasons. The PTI could have joined the central government, looked into the drone strike issue and affected the policy on it.

For the PTI, there are three questions to ponder: first, even if the PTI performs better in KP, how would the people of Punjab know about that to let the PTI enter the Punjab Assembly overwhelmingly next time? Second, if drone strikes are not halted what will the PTI do; and third, why should voters send the PTI to the Centre with a majority next time when it is devoid of any experience to run (even any part of) the federal government?

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com