Commentators – some with consternation and the more cynical with much humour – have noted how the PPP, in relation to the new parliamentary configuration, has been unwilling to make any meaningful concessions to its hallowed commitment to majority rule. Instead, the party seeks refuge in a questionable constitutional provision that allows it to form and operate a government of its liking. According to the PPP mythology, the most heinous crime the PNC committed was to subvert democracy (defined as majority rule). Indeed, the party usually contends that for the PNC to redeem itself it needs to be contrite and atone for its sins. Yet today, when a somewhat different explication of majority rule stares the PPP in the face, it refuses to make any measurable allowance for it.
As I shall argue in this and the following article, this PPP/C’s position has some merit: constitutionality trumps “majority rule” for the latter can only be sensibly and practically conceived as an outcome of the former. However,
