Back in April of last year, 123 PTI MNAs resigned from their seats. The notification at the time stated that after these resignations would be accepted, new elections would become necessary. Had these resignations been accepted, by-elections would have been held within 60 days of its own notification. Now, however, forty-five of these lawmakers have withdrawn these resignations as per the order of the party chairman and ex-premier.

As per party leadership, the decision follows the refusal of the speaker to accept all these resignations since April when they were first filed. Now, there are plans to take back these posts to oust the supposed “fake” NA opposition leader. This will allow a majority in the assembly when the vote of no confidence is enacted against Shehbaz Sharif. However, this development can be linked to the NA speaker accepting more of these pending PTI resignations last week and PTI’s indecision on the path forward.

To put this development into context, it comes in the midst of an economic and governance crisis. While the current power outage is being described as non-critical, energy and gas distributions are seeming to present problems in the remainder of the FY. The sector is already embroiled in circular debt as the government is unwilling to recover costs and let the market function. Therefore, in the middle of this economic crunch, such back-and-forth should be condemned.

The PTI remains irresolute and this move may risk its popularity as it can be seen as a backtrack from last year’s decision to pressurise the PDM by protesting. While the party’s next move will be to nominate an opposition leader, it is about time that such games stop from both sides. This governance limbo from last year must come to an end so we can move forward and begin to tackle the real issues at hand. In this regard, the economy and rebuilding of climate resilient infrastructure takes much greater salience than inter-party politics