Ever since the controversy of the construction of six channels on the Indus River broke out, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N )’s most important allies, Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP), broke a clear line in the sand: paid tribute to the project, or risk the collapse of the federal government.

As political tensions rise between the two major parliamentary forces, where PPPP helped PML-N brost-coated along with a government at the center, the urgent question remains: Is PPP’s threat just a political attitude, or is it really prepared to pull the plug?

Experts remain for now divided

With PPPP and PML-N-Lock horns over horns, analysts claim that the survival of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s administration is now related to the backchannel negotiations-April 20-and-influence from powerful, behind the scenes.

PPP has expressed strong reservations about the canal project aimed at meeting the irrigation need of the Green Pakistan initiative (GPI) in the Cholistan Desert. These concerns are lasting since Punjab chief minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif and Chief of Army Staff (Coas) Gen Asim Munir inaugurated the project on February 15.

Since the formation of the coalition, both parties have often engaged in what many describe as “regular battles” that political theaters intended more for public optics than actual results.

However, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s latest ultimatum in Hyderabad marked a remarkable departure from the manuscript. He explicitly called on the government to stop the project or risk losing PPP support – an explicit threat that could bring the already fragile federal set up on the knees.

The warning worked when PML-N Supremo Nawaz Sharif and PM Shehbaz quickly instructed party officials to initiate dialogue before the situation spun out of control. Lectures were formally opened.

The first meeting between both sides remains pending.

However, experts see PPP’s defiance as more about self -storage than coalition dynamics. With its national footprint drastically reduced, Sindh the last bastion of the party remains, a redoubt that it cannot afford to lose.

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, President of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (Pildat), and Raza Ahmad Rumi, a political analyst and journalist, both believe that treason could paralyze PPP in his Heartland and that they cannot afford.

Mehboob noted that a party that once ruled Federation and all four provinces now finds the corner of Sindh. The province is the party’s power base, and every threat to it is a red line for PPP, he noted.

He noted that PPP may or may not have initially signaled its acceptance of the Cholistan Canals project.

The tide has since been turned. The emergence of a heartfelt anti-channel movement in Sindh has tied the party’s hands, making it difficult for it to give a window of opportunities for his opponents in Sindh to catch his last base.

“PPP will to some extent go to convince PMLN and the establishment to remove themselves with or at least postpone the Canals project,” said Mehboob, and added, “but if it can’t succeed, it may have to separate from support to the federal government.”

Rumi posted Mehboob to the extent that the party initially green-lit the project and noticed that while it originally gave the green light to the Canals project, a U-Turn was inevitable when it snowballed into a matter of Sindhi National Identity.

The party withdrew in its original position and joined the tape car for public activism on the issue.

That said, Rumi added a warning: Despite the noise, it is unlikely that PPP would actually end the coalition in Islamabad, considering its current level of comfort with regard to power sharing with both establishment and PML-N.

PPP certainly has the key to overthrowing this government, he said, pointing out that the government needs its most important allies’ votes to survive. “But it should be emphasized that the federal coalition was composed of the establishment”.

“And any change would be directed by them,” the analyst emphasized.