Round and round it goes; where it stops, nobody knows. Except this isn’t a circus act. It is the federation itself being whittled away by ego and a refusal to look at the bigger picture. Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has energy, ambition, and the platform to redefine her party’s politics.
Perhaps it was in the heat of the moment that she chose to reach for the oldest (and most divisive) card in the Pakistani deck to defend her province. Telling the PPP to “keep your advice to yourself” while asserting that “if Punjab wants to build canals for its water, why are you bothered?
It is Punjab’s water,” might play well to a local gallery, but the PPP’s walkout that followed in parliament was no mere tantrum. It was a stark reminder that Pakistan’s ruling coalition is tearing itself apart on questions too fundamental to be reduced to slogans.
The danger lies not only in framing a national dispute through a provincial lens during a moment of crisis. It lies in the PML-N’s retreat from its national identity into parochialism. By pressing ahead with canal projects despite Sindh’s objections and brushing aside the Benazir Income Support Programme as too “simplistic” for flood relief, its leaders undermine both the federal compact and the only welfare tool with proven reach.
The PPP, however, is hardly beyond reproach. Its leadership’s forays into Punjab and insistence that BISP remain the backbone of flood relief are all defensible. Yet the optics blur into electoral campaigning, especially for a party that casts itself as the guardian of the union. The parliamentary walkout may have restored dignity in the moment, yet it did nothing to steady institutions already buckling under climate and fiscal chaos.
There is no quarrel between two personalities. It is the coalition itself, meant to embody unity, that is splintering. The Council of Common Interests, the constitutional forum designed to resolve inter-provincial disputes, lies bypassed and ignored, while grievances are aired in press conferences and on social media.
The opposition, predictably, revels in the chaos. PTI offers only jeers, having squandered its own opportunity to strengthen institutions. It now feeds parasitically on dysfunction, ensuring that no consensus can take root.
What is at stake is larger than wounded pride. A state that cannot shield its people when they need it the most and that refuses to let its constitutional forums function is a state bleeding sovereignty day by day. If this coalition cannot reverse its slide, these leaders will not be remembered for having steered Pakistan through storms. They will go down in history as those whose feud triggered its steady disintegration. *