- While the world fights for its life, the government guns for the opposition
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. It is going after PML(N) President Shehbaz Sharif, with Information Minister Shibli Faraz saying that the Cabinet was considering placing his name on the Exit Control List. This was a follow-up to the earlier claim by Accountability SAPM Shehzad Akbar of discovery of Mr Sharif’s corruption and transfer of money abroad. Mr Faraz chose this juncture to spout a little homily on corruption, as if anyone was paying attention in this time when attention is riveted on the pandemic. Is the government trying to distract attention from its inadequacies in handling the crisis to its favourite theme, the corruption of the past?
That pattern would perhaps be clearer in Sindh, where PTI Sindh Assembly parliamentary leader Shamim Hussain Naqvi has called for emergency to be imposed in the provinces. This destabilization of the PPP Sindh government can only be explained by the party’s frustration at the impression that it 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, and Prime Minister Imran Khan has himself tried to denigrate the efforts of Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, 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 abated a jot or tittle of 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.
