On the edge, again
WE are at a familiar spot today — on the edge of a deep precipice where we land every few years during intra-elite conflicts where some elites act unconstitutionally. We are there for the third time in three years due to the same PTI-establishment tussle as no side has won and imposed order.
The last such long tussle was in the 1950s between political parties and the bureaucracy, which ended in 1958 when our alpha institution trumped both to impose its hegemony till today. It now faces a broad middle-class axis led by the PTI. It has not been able to crush the PTI, despite the no-trust vote, crackdown, rigged polls and false cases. The PTI has been reduced to waging mental warfare since May 9 — gung-ho talk from jail, social media abuse and global cribbing — as against its disruptive street war earlier. Yet, even mere mental sledging is giving powerful people sleepless nights.
Court verdicts have hurt too as they have showed spine on PTI cases, buoyed by strong currents flowing in its favour. The Supreme Court rightly undid the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) original sin in misreading its order on just denying the party its electoral symbol to actually barring the PTI totally from polls, treating its candidates as independents and depriving it of regular and reserved seats. Yet, ignoring this, the PML-N alleges that the court rewrote the Constitution to give the PTI unfair benefit that it didn’t even seek and when it wasn’t even a party to the case. But no law bars the apex court from giving relief that no one seeks or to a third party. It has done both, as in suo motu cases and the 62(1)(f) case where Nawaz Sharif profited too. Doing so, using the ‘complete justice’ clause (187), also makes eminent sense when all pleas of parties to a case violate laws and/or do substantive injustice, as in this case.
Giving reserved seats to the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) violates the law that parties must submit their reserved seats lists before polls and overly rewards a small party adopted by the PTI only due to the ECP’s fault. Giving them to other parties violates the law on awarding them in line with parties’ Assembly strengths and creates the injustice of rewarding some parties who many say plotted to keep the PTI out of polls. Even leaving them vacant violates the constitutional clause on the number of such seats for women and minorities and deprives weak groups of full representation.
Mere mental sledging is giving the powerful sleepless nights.
Thus, it gave a verdict that ensured justice, since the seats are fairly PTI’s, and violated no law, even if it helped a third party (that is actually seeking such relief from the court in cases like the bat case review). The Supreme Court simply reversed the ECP’s wrong act and extended the deadline for independents to join a party as the ECP’s wrong bar on the PTI from polls didn’t let them run on PTI tickets or join the party during the initial deadline for independents, forcing them to join the SIC. Such legitimate extensions fall under Article 254 and happen when people can’t use their rights by a deadline (for example, due to external factors such as floods). In the PTI no-trust case too, the Supreme Court extended the voting deadline. Thus, the PML-N has itself benefited often from court decisions it now calls unfair.
An angry PML-N says it will work to ban the PTI and file Article 6 cases against it. This reflects its apprehension that two bigger decisions may be delivered that could cause its set-up to fall: free Khan and decide Form 47 cases. But its panic is creating instability. It must remain calm and keep delivering in case there are early polls. The main issue now is not reserved but re-gular rigged seats; the main target now is not the PTI but the courts; the main concern is not Islamabad but Pindi. We are again at the edge of an abyss as legal lines might be crossed to banish the PTI if legal and borderline ways fail.
This conflict offers little to the masses. Whoever wins — the PML-N, PTI or the establishment — will rule as badly as before. The establishment’s new hybrid set-up, like the PTI one, is failing as political and economic stability and security remain elusive due to misrule, the TTP and delayed Gulf billions. It is high time it quit politics. Politicians too must act maturely and jointly pursue political legitimacy via fair polls. While all of them are inept, regular polls may force them to do well or lose to better new parties. Punjab’s politics especially has become truly competitive with two major parties that can’t afford not to perform. Thus, the public mandate must be allowed to cleanse politics.
The writer is a political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2024