In the ruthless business of politics, you survive and thrive only after developing a deeply thick skin. And Yousaf Raza Gilani is almost a veteran of this craft.

At the outset of Monday’s sitting of the Senate, he took the floor to play some masterstrokes and convincingly established his command over the skill of perception management.

The story he told with visibly hurt heart, instantly moved Senator Sadia Abbassi. She is the elder sister of Shahid Khaqan Abbassi, a former prime minister; also known for being more fierce than even her otherwise hawkish-sounding brother when it comes to defending Nawaz Sharif and his politics.

She emotionally recalled that her late father had deep respect for Yousaf Raza Gilani. He is an honourable man, who steadfastly stood with his party, the PPP, and lost the prime minister’s office for defying a former Chief Justice while sticking to some principles. Senator Abbassi also extended unsolicited and unqualified apologies, not only from her person but also the party, if Gilani felt deeply hurt due to some deriding comments coming from the PML-N regarding his absence from Friday’s sitting of the Senate.

Her speech would surely help the Pakistan Peoples’ Party to politely disregard his offer of resignation from the office of the opposition leader in the Senate. Defending his conduct during Monday’s sitting, Gilani also informed the House that to protect his party from embarrassing questions, he had conveyed the desire of quitting the said office to PPP leadership.  

 

Gilani had been enduring a flood of taunts and barbs due to what had happened in the Senate last Friday. In spite of savouring a razor thin majority in the upper house of our parliament, the combined opposition had miserably failed to block bulldozing of the law, furnishing absolute autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan Friday morning. Eight opposition senators from different parties were missing from the house on that crucial day.

 

Disregarding the collective impact of the missing of eight opposition senators representing different parties, big or small, most commentators including this writer, preferred highlighting and questioning, merely the missing of Yousaf Raza Gilani. But he certainly deserved the focus for being the leader of the opposition in the Senate. In this capacity, he was indeed expected to lead a fierce resistance to the government’s scheme of furnishing astonishing-looking autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan.

The Imran government certainly felt forced to concede this autonomy; the IMF had been pressing for it before releasing $1billion to Pakistan. But Gilani’s party, Pakistan Peoples’ Party, had feverishly been projecting the autonomy-granting law as “slavishly surrendering the national sovereignty” and constantly bragged to block its passage by the Senate by employing all possible means of resistance. In the context of ceaseless crowing on this issue, Gilani’s absence had to be noticed, doubly.  

 

Instead of candidly admitting not being alert and vigilant regarding a significant legislative development, the former prime minister rather provoked more taunts and barbs by pleading that the government had employed deceptive tactics to bulldoze the State Bank related law.

 

The passage of the said bill, he kept helplessly reminding, was cunningly put on Friday’s agenda during the late hours of Thursday. He personally came to know about the same at 1:00am while staying put in Multan. He could not reach Islamabad to prevent bulldozing of this law by personally leading the opposition.

 

The excuse he furnished sounded laughable to many. He clearly knew that on Pakistan’s repeated requests the IMF had finally fixed the meeting of its Board of Governors for Feb 2, 2022. That made it obvious that before holding of the scheduled meeting, the Imran government was ready and determined to employ all means of appeasing and coercion to get the State Bank related law passed by the Senate. If Gilani was really keen to block it, he should have been staying put in Islamabad to conceive and effectively execute a preventive strategy.

 

The noticeable missing of Yousaf Raza Gilani also forced many to seriously wonder about why in spite of consistent double-dealings by a group of six senators, the opposition was still counting them as its “supporters”. A typical wheeler-dealer, Dilawar Khan, leads this group. As an upwardly mobile businessperson, he had reached the Senate with the support of Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif. But after the fall of the previous government, he gradually began slipping to greener pastures.

 

After the election of the Senate Chairman in March this year, the PPP and the PML-N started to develop serious differences for multiple reasons. Both of them were also keen to grab the office of the opposition leader in the Senate. As if to deliberately facilitate Gilani in winning the said race, conveniently, Dilawar Khan announced the desire of moving to the opposition benches along with five other senators, known for being friends to all but sincere to none. The same group also recognised Gilani as the opposition leader.

 

In spite of apparently switching to the opposition benches, the same group had repeatedly been voting for the government whenever it felt the need of bulldozing the plethora of controversial laws.

 

The open and consistently opportunistic conduct of this group also began burning many hearts currently occupying backbenches of Pakistan Peoples’ Party in the Senate. At least two of them, Raza Rabbani and Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar were widely reported to have transmitted their feelings to PPP leadership as well. Gilani was thus being forcefully pushed to disown the group led by Dilawar Khan.

 

Through his speech Monday, Gilani conceded to have felt more hurt for questions being raised from within his own party. Such voices obviously helped him to spin a sob story that underlined his steadfast loyalty and sacrifices for the PPP. Dilawar Khan also came out into the open to clearly state that he and his group would continue to support or oppose the government on a case-to-case basis.

 

He also claimed that Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin took the pain of explaining to him how the State Bank connected law was drafted while keeping the “supreme national interest” in mind. Yousaf Raza Gilani, on the contrary, was not around to present the counter arguments. In short, Dilawar Khan finally declared in clear terms that he and his group should no longer be counted as “the opposition” in the Senate. This took care of the dilemma Yousaf Raza Gilani had been facing for the past so many months.