Daily Times

The seal is set and the heartland of Pakistan finally has a new governor. Both Mr Balighur Rehman’s appointment and his subsequent presence atop the ministering stool were signs of the exhausted province making merry on its way to normalcy.

But lo and behold! Partisan politics refuse to die down a silent death. With the deseated parliamentarians’ notification (the 25 not-so-lucky Charlies), the throne of Chief Minister Hamza Shahbaz is staggering on wobbly legs. No matter how loudly the coalition government may huff and puff, the PTI’s resoluteness in moving heaven and earth to get its point across is becoming clearer with every passing day.

Since Speaker Chaudhry Pervez Elahi is comfortably perched on his green cushioned chair, he would leave no stone unturned in crippling the governance machinery. The need for a united house could not be more felt as strongly as now when the Punjab Assembly is pulling its socks up, rolling its sleeves and getting its act together for the budget season.

Under ordinary circumstances, the session would have been a battle royale between the treasury and opposition benches. The road ahead would have still appeared challenging but what to do when a lion’s share of the house refuses to raise its hat to the power seat? Isn’t the political equation, prima facie, destined to fail? Quite understandably, the ruling PML(N) would be in a great hurry to race through the money bill because failure to do so would raise an unobliterable stain on its reputation.

No power on the face of the earth can save a political party from shuttering once its financial blueprint goes down like a lead balloon. The bruising showdown appears to have taken centre stage as our beloved democracy–a convention created for the people by the people–is tragically insistent on standing against the people.

For far too long, Punjab was running without an effective executive. The most brutal hit has been the common man whose buying capacity is in a freefall. Skyrocketing prices of everyday essentials are burning a hole in modest pockets that no selective lifelines can help overcome. A fragile economy is constantly colliding with the whims of those who blabber on and on about holding the public’s interests at heart. Agonizingly, they do not even care about the damages. *