Sardar Ayaz Sadiq returning to the Speakership of the National Assembly was important more as a reflection of the majority the new government is likely to have, apart from the importance of his victory. The day he was elected was also the day that the KP and Balochistan Assemblies elected CMs, joining Punjab and Sindh, which had done so earlier. The pattern in all four provincial assemblies, where the votes for the Speaker closely mirror the votes for the CM, is almost certain to be followed at the federal level.
With these two, the only CM opposed to the central coalition was selected in the shape of Ali Amin Gandapur in KP and Sarfraz Bugti in Balochistan. Mr Bugti is a symbol of how close the present caretakers have been sailing to the wind, as he had started the election season as caretaker federal Interior Minister. He had been a member of the PML(N) and a provincial minister in the 2013-18 Assembly, but then had become the caretaker Interior Minister. He had resigned that position in December to enter the electoral fray from the PPP’s platform. He has been luckier than two of his predecessors, Rana Sanaullah of the PML(N) and Sh Rashid, who held the portfolio when the PTI government lost office in 2022, both of whom lost their elections to the National Assembly. Now the process of provincial Cabinet formation will be proceeding apace, and must be relatively advanced in Punjab and Sindh, where the CMs took office some days ago, it will now start in KP and Balochistan.
PML(N) President Mian Shehbaz Sharif is a shoo-in for Prime Minister, but he will have more difficulty than before in managing his coalition. This time around, the PPP is staying out, and reserves the right to decide on support to the government from issue to issue. Its refusal to support the government on any issue can bring the government down. Meanwhile, the PPP will expect to be paid its price for support. Not only must party co-chairman Asif Zardari be elected President, but the Punjab and KP governorships must be given it too. The Sind governorship will remain with the present incumbent, Kamran Tessori of the MQM (P). Now that the spoils of office have been distributed, is it too much to expect of the government that it will begin to pay attention of the dire straits of the national economy, and the dire straits of the ordinary Pakistani who only so recently bored, and thus placed them all in the high offices they enjoy?
