Shahbaz Sharif will be the chief minister of Punjab once again. The Supreme Court’s decision to stay Mr Sharif’s disqualification means the Punjab government stands reactivated as it was before Feb 25.
Mr Sharif is not entirely out of the woods yet — a final decision on the review petition against his disqualification is pending. But yesterday’s move was a step in the right direction, and it was especially welcome to see the PPP react positively. Legal issues aside, the politicians have it within their power to ensure the Sharif brothers can return to electoral politics, so it is good for political stability if the politicians are tamping down talk of confrontation and paying heed to each other’s electoral mandates.
There are still some unanswered questions though. First, the PPP was part of the Punjab government until Feb 24 but will its ministers now return to office? There are powerful voices in the PPP that are against such a move. A practical argument is that Shahbaz Sharif’s style of governance is overbearing and that his ministers have very little room to make their own decisions.
If you’re part of the PML-N, you may be willing to accept Mr Sharif micromanaging your ministerial affairs, but less so if you’re a coalition partner. Why stay in a government in which you wield little to no power when you can sit in the opposition and take the government to task? So the PPP may choose not to rejoin the government in Punjab.
Second, what is the immediate future of the PPP in Punjab? While rumours of the party’s death in the province may be premature, there is no doubt that it runs a very distant second to the PML-N in many, if not most, of Punjab’s cities and towns at least. Paradoxically, being in power at the centre may have hurt the PPP more in Punjab that any other party could.
Virtually all potential leaders of the PPP in Punjab have been drawn to office in Islamabad — Shah Mehmood Qureshi is the foreign minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani is the prime minister, etc. — leaving the party bereft of heavyweights on the provincial scene. This becomes especially problematic when the PPP’s main rival in Punjab is a resurgent PML-N run by the formidable Shahbaz Sharif.
Third, where does the PML-N go from here? Only up it seems. Faced with many of the same problems that the federal government has been confronted with — rampaging militants, economy in the doldrums, etc. — the PML-N has shrewdly tailored its message to appeal to a provincial electorate that is relatively conservative and, as demonstrated by the case of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, attracted to specific issues. Most of all though, consolidating power for the PML-N will be that much easier if the other political options remain rudderless.
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