Bad time to be bitter

At one level, it does not make sense. Faced with perhaps the greatest challenge of the country’s existence, in the shape of the Covid-19 pandemic, the PTI does not stop following its basic instincts by going after the opposition. Now PTI leader Shamim Hussain Naqvi has called for an emergency to be imposed in Sindh. This destabilization of the Sindh government can only be explained by the PTI's frustration at the impression that the PPP has done a better job of dealing with the pandemic than either of the PTI’s two provincial governments, or indeed of its federal government.

As if unable to engage in healthy competition, the PTI has without let-up engaged in sniping at the Sindh government instead of encouraging or praising them. The recent demand that the federal government should take over provincial government hospitals seems rooted more in spite than because they are being badly managed.The PTI may have come to power on an anti-corruption platform, and a stance of confrontation with the opposition, but it should realize that this is not the time to be vengeful, or to try and suppress opponents. The government has shown by its latest actions that it has not given up its pre-pandemic attitude and it still believes that it can ask for votes at the hustings based on how much it persecutes its opponents.

Qazi Jamshed Alam Siddiqui

Lahore