No honeymoon: A bumpy road ahead for ruling alliance

Source: The Nation

ISLAMABAD - Though the newly formed PDM.2 government is seemingly running its matters smoothly, yet plethora of challenges especially for its ruling party [PML-N] are set to start not only from opposition side but also expectedly by its allies.

Obviously, the ruling party in the coalition government al­ways has to run the gov­ernment with patience as it has to continuously bear criticism by the opposition over its policies and it has never been in a position to annoy its coalition partners due to many reasons. The incumbent government has to face first political show of power by the PTI ex­pectedly in coming months, as the stalwarts of PTI has started hinting at launching long march against the gov­ernment. This government has over two-month period for introducing a balanced budget, which is again a dif­ficult task in the given cir­cumstances. The rest of al­lies, mainly PPP, are not the part of federal cabinet so all the blame will be shifted on the ruling party. Though other main allies includ­ing MQM-P and JUI-F have not openly expressed res­ervations to the ruling par­ty but they would not spare it if required share not giv­en during the distribution of Chairmanships of parlia­mentary committees. The government, in the second session of its 16th National Assembly, will start the for­mation of National Assem­bly Standing Committees. The distribution of Chair­manships is allotted main­ly to major political forces from treasury benches, so the Pakistan People's Par­ty [PPP] will not be shy to grab Chairmanships of im­portant Standing Com­mittees, background dis­cussions with senior politicians revealed. The MQM-P, they said, are also interested in taking Chair­manships of some main parliamentary committees. Political observers viewed that this ruling party has not even enjoyed its Hon­eymoon period (First 100 days after the formation of the government). Nor­mally, the governments are given first hundred days by the opposition to settle the matters, as after this peri­od they open the dissent­ing chorus on each matter. The second session of the national assembly is like­ly to be summoned in the next week. The opposition, mainly the members of Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) has planned to give tough time to the government over its economic policies and other political mat­ters. Political and constitu­tional experts viewed that a bumpy road ahead for this government not on po­litical but also on econom­ic front, so it to run its gov­ernment cautiously.