AT PENPOINT
When this appears, perhaps the most solemn election in Pakistan, that of the President, will be a day away. Though it appears that the President cannot do anything, the futile efforts of the incumbent, Dr Arif Alvi, proving this, he is actually the head of all three branches of government. He does not appoint any of its heads, but he gives oath of office to the Prime Minister (who heads the Executive), and to the Chief Justice of Pakistan (who heads the Judiciary). He is part of Parliament, and it is only after his assent that any of its Acts become law. If the armed forces are taken as a separate organ of state, the President is ex officio Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, because of this, in the last two Martial Laws, the sitting President stayed in office, and when his term was over, was replaced by the military ruler.
There are detractors of Mr Zardari who point out that a President enjoys immunity. Indeed, the refusal of Prime Minister Yusaf Reza Gilani to revive a case against him led to his dismissal. Mr Zardari has managed to repel all the cases against him, and has been acquitted in them, but he is still not in the clear. While he cannot be prosecuted in the cases where he was acquitted, because of the principle of double jeopardy, there are some money laundering charges floating around which have not yet been disposed of. Mr Zardari is not in the best of health, and is 71. He does not want to go back to jail.
The President is virtually a copy of the old British Viceroys of India. The Viceroy in turn was a mirror of the monarch, whom he represented, and enjoyed all the powers in India which the monarch enjoyed in. the UK. The only restraint on him is the advice of the PM being binding. Though Ziaul Haq tried to give the President some powers, to delay government actions and legislation, and to dissolve the National Assembly and thus the government, all that is left is the power to delay legislation.
The JUI(F), which was originally part of the PDM, has now pulled out. Its five MNAs did not take part in the Prime Minister’s election, and while they deprived Mian Shehbaz Sharif of five votes.Apart from those five, the JUI(F) has four Senators and 13 Balochistan MPAs and nine KP MPAs with four votes. This is a total of 26 votes in the presidential electoral college, where MNAs, Senators and Balochistan MPAs have a vote each, and the three other provincial assemblies only have as many votes as the Balochistan Assembly. While these votes are not to be sneezed at, Zardari has the numbers if the PPP and PML(N) combine, not to mention the contributions that will be coming from such government components as the MQM(P). One reason why the JUI(F) is not taking part in the presidential election is that party chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman wants the job. By voting for the PM, the JUIF) would have committed itself to voting for Mr Zardari. The PTI had decided to put up Mehmood Khan Achakzai, another red flag to the Maulana, because apart from not adopting him, the PTI had adopted one of his party’s competitors. It should not be forgotten that Achakzai’s Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and the JUI(F) are fierce competitors in Balochistan’s Pashtun belt.
While Zardari and the Maulana may have focused on the Presidency, virtually all other offices have been filled. The only query left is over the Senate Chairmanship, which has been allocated to the PPP, and which will fill it after the Senate election, which should be taking place about now, but which has been timed by the Election Commission of Pakistan so that those Senators whose term is expiring, vote for the President. The Senate Chairman is a sort of Vice-President, for he acts as President when the President is abroad, or there is a vacancy in the office (indeed, in the USA and India, a Vice-President is elected, and assigned to preside over the Senate in the USA, and the Rajya Sabha in India.)
The chips have landed all over the place. It has been noted that Punjab is the first province to have a female Chief Minister in Maryam Nawaz, but it should be noted that it remains the only province not to have had a female Speaker or Deputy Speaker. Sind has had a female deputy Speaker and Balochistan a female speaker and a female Deputy Speaker, and the National Assembly has had a female Speaker, while KP has now its second female Deputy Speaker. The Senate has had a female Deputy Chairman, the late Dr Noor Jehan Panezai, who held the office in the 1991-1994 tenure. Before her, the National Assembly had a female Deputy Speaker, Dr Ashraf Abbassi. There is a definite cluster of doctors as presiding officer or deputy presiding officer. National Assembly Speaker Fehmida Mirza, Deputy Speaker Ashraf Abbasi, Noor Jehan Panezai and Mehertaj Roghani (Deputy Speaker KP in the 2013-2018 term) all had medical degrees.
The PTI has been outdone. It may have been the largest single party in the National Assembly in its Sunni Ittehad Council avatar, but its opponents have formed the government. It lives to fight another day, but it has once again been confined to KP, the position it was in after the 2013 election.
As for Punjab, it may be a first to have a female CM, but Sindh has had a female Governor, when Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, the widow of the Prime Minister held the office from 1973 to 1977. That did not begin a trend, as did Dr Ashraf Abbasi’s becoming Deputy Speaker. Maryam Nawaz’s elevation is the result of the family dynamic, If she had not been Nawaz Sharif’s daughter, she would not have become CM. She shares with him the distinction of becoming CM as soon as she entered the House, though even he had held office before, in the Martial Law provincial Cabinet, while she has no experience beyond handling affairs while he had a bypass as PM.
Other CMs have also got ancestry on their side, though none is a PM’s son. While KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur is the son of a former KP minister, Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah’s father had held the office. Balochistan CM Sarfraz Bugti is the son of a tribal clan head, who had been a member of the Zia-era Majlis-i-Shura. He is perhaps the most widely experienced, for he has been a provincial minister, and resigned as caretaker Interior Minister to contest the election. His being chosen CM should raise eyebrows, for caretakers are not supposed to contest elections. Having accepted office, and then abandoning it gives rise to the suspicion that he used the federal office to lobby for himself in Islamabad. This was perhaps the last blot on the record of the caretakers.
Gandapur is probably the most fortunate of the CMs, probably because he was subject to the lowest expectations. Even before he unveiled his Cabinet, there were murmurings that he was going to KP’s Buzdar.
However, while the whole exercise of elections and government formation does not seem to have broken the hold of the PTI over the electorate, it was unable to translate this popular support into obtaining the government. The PDM returned, with Mian Shehbaz Sharif the only incumbent Prime Minister since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977 to return to office, albeit after an interval.
The PTI has been outdone. It may have been the largest single party in the National Assembly in its Sunni Ittehad Council avatar, but its opponents have formed the government. It lives to fight another day, but it has once again been confined to KP, the position it was in after the 2013 election.
Are there chances of another dharna? Possibly, but the main drawing-card will not be there. While Barrister Gohar Ali Khan and Umar Ayub are no doubt men of sterling worth and are devoted to the party, they would be the first to admit that they are hardly crowd-pullers compared to Imran Khan. But what other choice does the PTI have?
