Imran Khan’s hinted return to the National Assembly in order to enforce, through parliament, his party’s demand for early elections has been enough to prompt the NA Speaker to take a hasty U-turn on his prior position on PTI MNAs’ resignations.

While the PTI should never have absconded from the Lower House in the first place, it ought to have been welcomed if it wanted to re-enter the National Assembly and pursue its political goals from within.

Parliament has been largely defunct ever since the PTI walked out and left the job of opposition to the approximately two dozen ‘dissidents’ whose loyalties are believed to be with the PDM government anyway. That was an imprudent decision which should never have been taken. But despite insisting for months that the resigned MNAs should return to parliament and rejoin the formal political process, the PDM has suddenly gotten cold feet and would rather not see them anywhere near the House.

Mr Khan’s plan appears to have been that a group of PTI lawmakers would be asked to return to the Lower House and take the leadership of PTI’s parliamentary party back from the dissident group led by Raja Riaz, who is also the current Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly.

Doing so is necessary if the PTI wants to block the dissidents from voting for Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in case he is asked to take a vote of confidence, as they will be bound to whatever direction is issued by the leader of their parliamentary party. The vote of confidence could then be demanded through the president if he could be convinced that the prime minister has lost the trust of the majority. There would be grounds if the MQM walks out of the coalition, as it threatened to over the chaotic LG polls in Sindh.

The PTI may be chastised for planning to return to parliament only when it suited it to do so, but this would nonetheless be a better and more democratic route than turning by-elections into ‘referendums’ or taking extreme measures like dissolving the provincial legislatures.

However, the NA Speaker’s sudden about-turn on the PTI MNAs’ resignations, which have been pending for months, shows weakness on the other side. It has been said in these pages that an early general election seems necessary to restore political stability, which is desperately needed for the country’s economic challenges to be addressed decisively, but it should not be enforced to the detriment of any faction.

However, if both sides are going to continue their tiresome posturing instead of resolving their differences, matters can spiral out of control very quickly, with lasting consequences for national stability. Saner minds on both sides should put an end to the nonsense on display.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2023