Who rules over what?

If one were to believe opposition politicians, at least three provincial governments in Pakistan are being run via remote-control by powerful party leaders rather than their respective chief ministers.
To an extent, they are right. It is claimed that the PPP government in Sindh is being run from the Zardari House, or to be precise by the party head and former president Asif Ali Zardari. As there is more than one Zardari House, it means the orders come from wherever Asif Ali Zardari is staying.
The opposition parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been claiming that the provincial government is being managed from the Bani Gala home of PTI chairman Imran Khan. In their view, the PTI-led coalition government is run by Imran Khan instead of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.
Similar claims are made with regard to the coalition government in Balochistan headed by Chief Minister Dr Abdul Malik Baloch. The opposition parties, particularly the JUI-F, keep claiming that the government of Baloch and Pakhtun nationalists in Balochistan was made in Lahore and its strings are being pulled by the ruling Punjabi politicians of Punjab.
That leaves only Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s government in Punjab as the lone truly empowered provincial administration in the country. This government is no doubt being run from Punjab. This has much to do with the person of Shahbaz Sharif, who as the younger brother of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is an extraordinarily powerful chief minister. Another factor is Shahbaz Sharif’s administrative skills and strong personality. His long experience as the Punjab chief minister has provided him an added advantage to pick and choose his team and get his orders implemented.
Yet another plus factor is that the governments in both Punjab and the centre belong to the PML-N unlike the other provinces where the chief ministers cannot even imagine getting the kind of attention from the Prime Minister that Shahbaz Sharif is able to obtain. In fact, Shahbaz Sharif is not only ruling Pakistan’s most populous province, but also acting as the government and the PML-N’s trouble-shooter and some sort of an ambassador at large.
There are certain theories why the elderly Syed Qaim Ali Shah is still the chief minister of Sindh despite his old age and unimpressive performance. It is alleged that he is easy to manipulate and willing to do the bidding of the party leadership. Apparently, the Zardari House feels justified in guiding the chief minister and the PPP government in its stronghold of Sindh for the larger interest of the party. The party leadership believes the PPP government must do well in Sindh in order to convince voters in other provinces of Pakistan to give the party another chance.
However, the Sindh government has neither done well in terms of governance during its two-year rule since the May 2013 general elections nor does it possess the capability to improve on its lacklustre performance in the remaining three years of its rule. And if one takes note of the most recent events concerning the Rangers’ actions against senior Sindh government officials involved in corruption, there is little chance the PPP ruling elite will be able to recover and cleanse its tainted image.
Somehow, there has always been this feeling that some top PPP leaders have been involved in corruption and the plethora of cases that were registered against them helped reinforce the impression that they have been using politics and the PPP platform to enrich themselves. Not all these charges were true and Asif Ali Zardari was acquitted in some of these cases, but his reputation and that of certain other PPP leaders was tarnished so much that it is now beyond repair. It is, therefore, not surprising that Asif Ali Zardari has taken the initiative to befriend Altaf Hussain once again so that their parties can become allies in confronting the army after having suffered at the hands of the Rangers in Karachi.
The situation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is different. The political parties that lost the May 2013 general election to the PTI have still not been able to come to terms with reality. They don’t want to believe that the electorate abandoned them en masse and voted in large numbers for Imran Khan’s upstart PTI. In particular, the ANP, JUI-F and the PPP that had dominated the politics in the province got such a rude shock that they started alleging that the 2013 election was rigged in favour of the PTI. This is the reason these three parties got together to form an unlikely alliance for the May 30 local government elections in a bid to avoid another electoral drubbing at the hands of the PTI.
This was a wise move as their alliance enabled them to do well in the polls and prevent another PTI landslide victory. The three parties are now standing together agitating against the rigging and mismanagement in the local government elections and demanding resignation of the PTI-led coalition government and re-election under a neutral caretaker setup in the province.
Meanwhile, one of the favourite phrases used by the opposition parties is to accuse Imran Khan of running the coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from his sprawling residence in Islamabad’s Bani Gala area. Their allegation is somehow justified as the PTI chairman has kept a strict watch over the running of Chief Minister Pervez Khattak’s government and often vetoed its decisions, corrected its course and guided its policies. However, this isn’t something new in Pakistan where most of dynasty-based parties are controlled by strong leaders and are run as a family affair. The PTI hasn’t yet indulged in dynastic politics primarily due to Imran Khan’s stand against it but the same cannot be said about some of his party leaders who have helped their kith and kin to enter politics.
The case of Balochistan is unique as political parties with conflicting ideologies and bitter past rivalries invariably join hands to form unwieldy coalition governments. All of them get to enjoy power and none is criticised or singled out even if there is rampant corruption or misrule. Just like the MQM in Sindh, Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s JUI-F has been part of almost every coalition government in Balochistan for the past many years and being in the opposition nowadays is both unfamiliar and uncomfortable for its local leaders.
One of the top JUI-F leaders in Balochistan is Maulana Mohammad Khan Sherani, who said recently that the government of nationalist parties in the province had been formed in Lahore and is running under the directives of Punjab’s rulers. He pledged that the JUI-F would not join any government that worked under the influence of Islamabad or Punjab.
Ironically, Maulana Sherani holds a federal job as head of the Council of Islamic Ideology and his JUI-F is an ally of the PML-N’s Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif, both hailing from Punjab. The JUI-F is part of the federal government and is unwilling to pull out its two ministers from the federal cabinet. It is thus rather strange that he is blaming the nationalist rulers of Balochistan of taking orders from Punjab.
There is no doubt that the Balochistan government has been unable to deliver on many fronts and has failed to start the promised peace talks with the separatist Baloch elements who are sponsoring the insurgency in the province. Still Dr Abdul Malik Baloch and his cabinet have been trying hard to improve governance and do a better job than the previous PPP-led coalition government headed by Nawab Aslam Raisani.
The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar.
Email: rahimyusufzai@yahoo.com