t is obvious to most people that the federal government, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz is in a tight spot. It may be argued that it has been in the spot since the day it came into power. Thanks mainly to its minority status – since the third largest party in the National Assembly, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), has chosen to back it without assuming executive responsibility – its future has been uncertain from the very beginning. In fact, even before the PML-N formed the government, a big question mark hung over the propriety of its rule. As is known and recognised – even discounting the allegations of rigging in February elections – a block of independent candidates had secured more votes than the PML-N could manage.

It was obvious that these independents belonged to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. Following a series of court orders and rulings by the Election Commission of Pakistan, they were barred from using their party’s election symbol and the party’s name in election-related materials.

Now that the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that for all constitutional and parliamentary intents and purposes the independents belong to the PTI, how far has the realm of the obvious moved into an obscure territory?

Here is a glimpse of some more obvious developments:

The PML-N is desperate to keep the PTI and its founder, Imran Khan, out of the political arena as this is the only way for it to win the next elections whenever they take place. Imran Khan remains hugely popular in its traditional stronghold of the Punjab. The ruling coalition and its not-so-silent parliamentary backer, the PPP, are divided on almost every issue: economy, energy, privatisation, development spending and foreign policy.

The PML-N itself is showing unmistakable signs of running out of steam in the very first quarter of its rule. It lacks innovative solutions for the economic challenges; it does not have a political narrative to sell to the people after having compromised on its earlier one of vote koe izzat doe (respect the people’s electoral choice); and its cabinet is full of people from the dreadfully divided 1990s who are out of touch with the new political, social and culture realities. The ministers seem to have been chosen because they are the only ones known to the PML-N’s top leaders, who are equally out of touch with these realities. It appears that the visibly aged and tired looking PML-N leadership gave no serious thought to the idea of appointing the right person for the right job.

There are dissentions aplenty in the party. Its former prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, and its former finance minister, Miftah Ismail, have launched their own party. Former Sharif loyalists Javed Latif, Rohail Asghar and Asif Kirmani are giving interview after interview to show the party in a very poor light. One man, Nawaz Sharif, seems to be making all the decisions. He is apparently listening only to those within an earshot: essentially his daughter.

To state the obvious, it was Maryam Nawaz’s anointment as her father’s political heir that prompted many senior PML-N leaders to leave the party. Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who won a legislative seat in nine consecutive elections between 1985 and 2018, was the first to depart for this reason. Abbasi followed for the same reason. Many others are waiting only for the right moment.

What is making the bad situation worse for the party is that its government seems to be ruling without possessing and wielding any real power. Its interior minister is a gift from you know who; its energy and economic policies are being made by the IMF, and it appears to be contributing little to policies about national security and foreign affairs which appear to have become the exclusive domain of the establishment. Many within the PML-N and almost everyone else in the commentariat is wondering why the party agreed in the first place to form a minority government with its hands tied.

This much, too, is well known.

What is less clear is why a party facing such serious internal challenges and external difficulties has not paused to ponder what – and who – brought it here. Why is it bent upon opening ever-new fronts without succeeding or withdrawing from any? Consider a sampling over a single week:

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz did not turn up to receive President Asif Ali Zardari when he visited Lahore a few days ago. The presidential protocol required her to do so. For Zardari’s PPP, it stirred some half-buried ghosts from the past when the then chief minister, Nawaz Sharif, had similarly refused to receive the then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in Lahore. The law minister rushed through the parliament a bill that gives the finance minister a carte blanche to nominate or remove anyone from the boards of directors of state-owned enterprises. Before the proverbial ink had dried on the draft, several PML-N stalwarts started criticising the Supreme Court judgment giving the PTI the right to exist as a political entity and a parliamentary party and acquire the seats reserved for women and minorities. Next came the shocker: the information minister announced that the government planned to ban the PTI and lodge treason cases against its senior leaders, including its founder, Imran Khan.

Had sanity had a seat at the PML-N’s decision-making table, it would have avoided all this. For obvious reasons, it cannot stay in power if the PPP stops supporting it in the parliament; it cannot undertake any meaningful reform or restructuring of state-owned enterprises – a task that requires a longer, deeper and wider cross-party deliberation and legislation – merely by shifting and replacing chairs in their boardrooms; it cannot take on the Supreme Court, where a large majority of judges has given rulings that do not favour its politics. Having already publicly accused the judges of being partisan how does it expect them to endorse its plans to ban the PTI?

The ruling party is apparently oblivious to the fact that at least three of these judges will become chief justices during its mandated term.

Regardless of the judicial, constitutional and legal merits of the Supreme Court’s judgment to grant the reserved seats to the PTI, the decision has serious political implications. The very first question it raises is: will the PMLN-member speakers in the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly embrace the Supreme Court verdict and designate the PTI-backed independents as PTI members? The answer will significantly change the composition of the National Assembly, making the PTI the single largest parliamentary party. This change will further erode the legitimacy of the PML-N led government, if it still has any, further constraining whatever little powers it has.

The large formal PTI presence in both the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly will also make it very difficult for the PML-N to run these legislative forums smoothly and carry out its legislative agenda. Even in the Senate, the numbers will change once elections take place to the vacant seats belonging to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. These seats were left vacant until a final judicial verdict materialised about the seats reserved for women and the minorities. That decision having been reached, the PTI is likely to win most of these Senate seats since it has a two-thirds majority in their electoral college, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. The resulting increase in the number of PTI senators is likely to have a negative impact on the government’s ability to rush legislation through the parliament, let alone be able to attempt constitutional reform.

Given that it has filed a review petition against the Supreme Court judgment on the reserved seats, the PML-N government could – perhaps should – have preferred discretion over bravado. It may have been better able to argue its case by limiting its criticism of the verdict to its judicial and legal merits without accusing the judges who have written it of being biased in favour of the PTI. Now its lawyers should expect intense scrutiny by the judges of every single word they utter in the court and every single statement their political bosses make outside the court.

These implications do not seem to have been obvious to the PML-N. Otherwise, it would have adopted a conciliatory tone not just towards the Judiciary and its own parliamentary allies but also towards its opponents since the problems confronting Pakistan cannot be addressed without a broad political and parliamentary consensus. A perpetual political confrontation will only make these problems worse. The continuation of confrontation – and the political and economic instability likely to arise out of it – is perhaps a major reason why the government’s plan to ban the PTI has found no backing from its allies.

Or perhaps these implications are too obvious to the PML-N. Perhaps that is why it is gunning to eliminate their root-cause, the PTI, by trying – or wishing – to ban it out of existence.

It could be acting under the belief that the establishment will support it in its quest to asphyxiate and bury what appears to be their common nemesis. Is that belief well founded? For how long will that support last? These are the more obscure factors in national politics today.

The writer is a journalist, a news media development specialist and the last