The gloves are off and the claws are out. For the PMLN and PPP have joined socially-distanced hands while promising to give a hard time to the ruling PTI over its brand spanking new 2021-22 budget. The latter, after having having squabbled its way out of the 11-party PDM opposition alliance, is now schmoozing up to the PMLN. Or rather, to party president Shehbaz Sharif who is, after all, Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly. Indeed, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was gracious enough to suggest that the younger Sharif use his own party’s lawmakers as he saw fit. The endgame is to block the budget in the National Assembly. Yet, bluntly put, the main opposition have dropped the ball. All this talk of protests and mobilisation is a bit late in the day. And smacks of doors being bolted after bolting horses. These are convenient moves to deflect from the fact that the PPP has held Sindh uninterrupted since 2008. And while everyone and their cats understands that provinces don’t have full control over purse-strings, this doesn’t detract from the plight of the people of Thar, who continue to suffer from famine and drought. As for the PMLN, the Sharif brothers, between them, have ruled the country for more than three decades. And yet here we still are. Of course, the opposition has every right to critique this or any other government budget. This is what democracy is. But it is also involves taking responsibility. And this means going beyond the usual sound bites and name-calling. For, really what good does it do to anyone or their cat to denounce the budget as an IMF architected one? Far better to have pressured the Centre from the get-go to share details of the Fund’s new stringent conditions. Yet the best approach would have been for the opposition parties to knuckle down and put in the hard work; spending the last year coming up with a shadow people-friendly budget. This is how democracies play fair and keep the citizenry in the loop. For it only when the latter is informed and empowered that it can speak truth to power the ballot-box. Naturally, doing this would have meant forming a real alliance of substance for the greater good. Because it is the job of the opposition to ensure that checks-and-balances are kept on regimes of the day; even more so than the media. Yet as things stand, the PMLN and PPP couldn’t even agree on how to execute a one-point agenda to send the PM and all his good (wo)men packing. It is hoped that the opposition learns from this misstep in time for the next budget. But it — as well as the incumbents — must also look beyond to the next general election and pledge to publish electoral manifestos at least three months before D-Day. Otherwise, democracy will not be the name of the game. *