Has the 60-day Clock Started Ticking?
The Supreme Court decision on May 26 last year signalled the beginning of the end of the “Empire”. It restored Mian Nawaz Sharif as PM of the Federation and seemed to signal to an excited population that for all practical purposes the machinations of backroom politics (selections) would give way in the future to a genuine representation (elections) of the people at the helm of national affairs. By this token both major political parties would seem to benefit, they had youthful leaders who aroused universal adulation, this was reflected in the near equal October 1993 vote. However, the Empire was not yet quite finished and even while conducting a deliberate retreat, it manoeuvred new alliances (1) ensuring that Mian Nawaz Sharif would not acquire the power that democracy bestows on the elected and (2) the Empire helped Ms Benazir to come to power even though the vote was too close to call and in that process acquired enough IUOs from her to make the going tough whenever she was faced with a political crunch. Because the powers-that-be had contrived to confine his Federal authority to the perimeters of Islamabad and to avoid being frustrated in exercising his Constitutional parameters, which would invoke civil war conditions, Mian Nawaz Sharif quit on July 18, 1993. CMs Mir Afzal Khan (in NWFP), Wattoo (in Punjab), Magsi (in Balochistan) and Muzaffar Shah (in Sindh) were in open defiance of Federal rule. Less than a year later, it would be an understatement to state that the PPP Government in NWFP is shaky at best, Wattoo in Punjab takes advice from everybody but does not listen to anybody, the Government in Sindh is in a state of paralysis because of the PPP-MQM rural-urban divide and Magsi in Balochistan remains very much an independent soul. For Constitutional purists, the Provincial “Autonomy” being presently exercised may not be a bad thing by itself, for a nation increasingly at odds internally on any number of issues, the Centre cannot afford to lose its pre-eminence, given the example of fragmentation of unions along ethnic lines as seen to great detriment in Eastern Europe and former USSR.
