After the beleaguered ruling PML-N itself, the party which sprang to defend most vigorously the existing democratic system against the ongoing onslaughts of PTI and PAT has been the PPP, once its arch foe. It is, however, not a new development.

PPP patriarch Asif Ali Zardari had famously assured such support to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the farewell dinner the latter threw for the outgoing President of Pakistan last year, by raising the PML-N slogan: ‘Nawaz Sharif qadam badhao hum tumharay saath hain’.

As the PTI and PAT sit-ins outside the Parliament heated up the political atmosphere, Mr Zardari again visited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at his Raiwind residence in Lahore and reiterated that support in talks over lunch.

The PPP’s central executive committee did same when it met in Karachi to take stock of the situation created by the unrelenting demands of Dr Tahirul Qadri and Imran Khan for the resignation of PM Nawaz Sharif and his gutsy brother Shahbaz Sharif.

That strategic support, extended to PM Sharif in his hour of need, may have been politically correct, but apparently not without a cost to party cohesion.

PPP leaders in Punjab are notably not happy with the leadership’s strategy. The party was virtually wiped out in May 2013 general elections and they would rather have their leadership put its weight behind the protesting PAT and PTI. PPP only has two members of the National Assembly from Punjab against its tally of 47 in the previous National Assembly.

In contrast, the PPP leaders in Sindh, comfortable with leading a coalition government in the province, were against disturbing the status-quo and wished every party completed their five-year term.

This deep fissure within the PPP is obvious from the mutually exclusive pronouncements made by some prominent party leaders publicly on television channels or privately in party meetings.

In his TV appearances, Qamar Zaman Kaira, formerly information minister and mouthpiece of the PPP, has argued that last general elections have become controversial. “If the PTI proves its claim that the election was rigged, I don’t think it would be wrong to call mid-term elections,” he said.

After the former additional secretary of the election commission, Mohammad Afzal Khan, “revealed” that the 2013 election were heavily engineered in favour of the PML-N, Mr Kaira, who had lost that election in his Lalamusa constituency in Punjab, said it left little doubt that the last general elections weren’t free and fair. He implied that the only way forward now was early elections.

But on the other hand his junior in the party and deputy information secretary PPP in Sindh, Sharjeel Memon, has strongly and repeatedly defended the PML-N government against the street campaigns of Dr Tahirul Qadri and Imran Khan.

In one of his interviews Mr Memon went so far as to say, “If Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns as a result of these street protests, people will lose confidence in parliamentary democracy.” Mr Memon calls the two protesting parties “alien to politics” in the country and not to be taken seriously.

Similarly, Syed Khursheed Shah, the PPP stalwart from Sindh and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, has consistently rejected the demand for the resignation of PM Nawaz Sharif, though firmly supporting electoral reforms.

But another party heavy weight from Punjab, former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, railed against the ruling PML-N and PM Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday for covering up the police brutality of June 17 outside the Minhajul Quran organisation of Dr Tahirul Qadri in Model Town in Lahore in which 14 PAT workers were killed.

Mr Gillani contrasted the PML-N leaders’ cries for rule of law and supremacy of the parliament today to their complete silence over his controversial removal from the government by the Supreme Court in June 2012.

He bitterly recalled that then too the two houses of parliament had passed resolutions in his support, and the Speaker National Assembly, Dr Fehmida Mirza, had ruled against his conviction by the court on contempt charges. However, neither Nawaz Sharif nor his PML-N uttered a word about the supremacy of the parliament. “I wish that Nawaz Sharif would have respected the supremacy of the Parliament when I was disqualified,” Gilani said.

While sharing the PPP deliberations behind closed doors during the past week, a party confidante of Mr Zardari said the PPP leaders from Punjab hold the PTI and PAT marches ‘godsend opportunity’ that the party must seize to get even with the PML-N.

They argued at the PPP Central Executive Committee meeting on August 25 that PML-N scandalised the Memogate, Kerry-Lugar Bill and various Supreme Court decisions with great political cost to the PPP government. Allying with the PML-N in its struggle for survival would further weaken the support for PPP in Punjab. “It is time to rethink the party’s policy towards Sharif brothers,” they warned.

A member of the disgruntled elements in Punjab PPP agreed that the party leadership was “increasingly coming under pressure from our side” and will have to respond sooner than later.

Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2014