After a meeting of PPP Punjab MNAs, MPAs and senators in Islamabad on Friday, the PPP spokesman, Mr Farhatullah Babar, announced that the PPP had “decided in principle to form its own government in the province, authorising party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari to nominate the candidate for the slot of chief minister”. The meeting was co-chaired by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and, on the sidelines, it is supposed to have even discussed the names of the possible PPP candidates for chief ministership.President Zardari as party chief said he tried his best to get the PMLN to take the course of reconciliation but in the end was unsuccessful in persuading the Sharifs. The mood in the meeting was confrontational after the unfolding of events in Punjab and the tone adopted by the PMLN leader Mr Nawaz Sharif. The dominant opinion was that the PPP should reach out to the PMLQ and with its help set up its government in Punjab; and there was some criticism of Prime Minister Gilani’s “soft” approach to the PMLN leadership. The minister for parliamentary affairs, Mr Babar Awan, told the press that the PPP and the PMLN were now embarked on separate paths.Actually, collision course is a more apt description, judging from the attacks carried out on the cars of the PMLN’s Raja Zafarul Haq and the PPP’s Ahmad Mukhtar. Violence is just under the surface and may envelop those parts of the country so far exempt from the mayhem of the terrorist organisations affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Predictably, the PPP is not getting a good press. And the party it was relying on for making up the numbers for its rule in Punjab, the PMLQ, is too shaky and internally riven to prove the pillar of strength the PPP parliamentary leader in the Punjab Assembly, Raja Riaz, thinks it is.The Chaudhrys of the PMLQ are “not speaking” because of the period of mourning observed by them after the death of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s mother, but everyone else is, including some members who are no longer worried about speaking out of turn. The PMLQ Secretary-General, Mushahid Hussain Syed, has condemned Governor’s Rule and asked President Zardari to lift it and accept the mandate held by the PMLN. Clearly, he doesn’t see his party lending a hand in replacing the said mandate. Another senior member, Mr Ijazul Haq, didn’t need to ask the leadership before he went and called at Raiwind to signal his abandoning of the party ship.The PMLQ has always been described as a divided party: Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain has been against aligning with the PPP while Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, more interested in salvaging Punjab’s local governments from the raids being conducted by the PMLN, has been all for it. But the party began fraying during 2007 when its patron President General Pervez Musharraf began to trip up. Today, the winning mathematics of power in the Punjab Assembly may no longer be controlled by the party because of a 32-seat-strong “forward bloc” it has lost to Raiwind. Given this situation, can the PPP muster a majority for its own chief minister in Lahore?Is the PPP in trouble? What does it want to do? Has the new situation been created by the imposition of Governor’s Rule because President Zardari was scared of the Long March “dharna” on March 16? Governor’s Rule can last two months, extendable with a vote in the National Assembly, during which Punjab will no longer facilitate the lawyers and not even give the special protocol enjoyed so far by Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Will the PPP be able to use the administration against the coming storm successfully? Conspiracy theorists have suddenly crept out of the woodwork. They say the endgame might not be a mid-term general election as desired by Nawaz Sharif but a political “intervention” (not a coup) sweeping both the parties from the political map once again. g Naval chief’s statement Pakistan’s Naval Chief of Staff Admiral Nauman Bashir issued a clarification after his statement on Ajmal Kasab on Friday but it was apparently too late. A newspaper still ended up producing the headline that he had made nonsense of Islamabad’s announcement that Kasab was a Pakistani and that the Mumbai attacks had been “partly” planned in Pakistan. Admiral Bashir’s statement was apparently quite harmless, saying he had no proof that “Kasab had used Pakistani waters to reach India”.Before the admiral, our air chief too had made some aggressive statements, but then the fear of war with India was dominant in Pakistan and a statement of reassurance was probably needed. But the latest statement has come after India has renounced war as an option and is preparing its answers to the questions Pakistan had posed to New Delhi after having owned up to the origin of the Mumbai attacks. Admiral Bashir has also referred to these questions, but his statement asking “where was the Indian navy?” has muddied the waters again, allowing New Delhi to say that Pakistan “speaks with many tongues”.Pakistan faces two situations: a lack of agreement at home and isolation at the international level. It hardly matters if Pakistan is right if it doesn’t carry the world, including China, with it. Being in denial may shore up domestic unity; but it is harmful at the international level. Most of the questions we ask India are platitudes. It is like asking the intelligence agencies of the United States where they were when the 9/11 attackers came flying hijacked planes? Or where is the proof that Muslim terrorists and not the Jews were involved in the 9/11 strikes; or where is the plane that hit the Pentagon, etc?This is a delicate moment. The moment of passion is past. The world has accepted Pakistan’s cooperative approach on the Mumbai attacks, and India with its sabre-rattling has been internationally isolated. This is the moment of the careful reference, of a coordinated approach that doesn’t falsely show to the world that the armed forces stand apart from the civilian government. Pakistan’s foremost objective is to normalise relations with India and restart the “composite dialogue” that everybody agrees India should no longer reject out of hand. Terrorism is a regional phenomenon and Pakistan is a victim of it equally with India. &*