Daily Times

As predicted in this space on November 30, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) remained unable to channelise its political gathering on November 30 into a coherent political force capable of putting pressure on the government to accept its demand of opening an independent and objective investigation into alleged rigging during the 2013 general elections. Interestingly, the PTI leadership behaved rationally and legally on that day by not crossing into the D-Chowk or humiliating practically, if not verbally, the premises of Pakistan’s parliament along with the prime minister and/or president’s secretariat. Moreover, the congregation, along with its vociferous leadership, dispersed quite timely. In addition, the physical encounter between the PTI and pro-government supporters in Faisalabad, which is considered the commercial hub of (central) Punjab, ended in fiasco so far as the former’s political intention and expected outcome were concerned.

In view of the foregoing, the following questions are generally asked by media persons, political activists, legal experts and academicians: why did the PTI remain unable to bend the government on November 30 to achieve its political goals? Why could Imran Khan not incite his passionate followers to cross into D-Chowk to create problems of law and order for the government machinery? Why is it so that both the government and PTI leaderships believe in media warfare than extending a hand to one another? Why did the PTI feel the need to start a countrywide series of confrontational politics rather than urging the state’s legal apparatus to come to its rescue? Moreover, why did the PTI fail to capitalise on the Faisalabad encounter where one PTI supporter lost his life? Is the (federal) government willing to unconditionally talk to the PTI to possibly avoid a repetition of the Model Town killings? And, more importantly, can the government and the PTI make peace?

In order to address the posed questions, it becomes pertinent to understand the political and legal context of the grand congregation on November 30. Prior to it, the PTI, along with its departed political partner, the Pakistani Awami Tehreek (PAT), attempted its best to replace the corrupt, unjust and exploitative system with a ‘new Pakistan’ where everybody would be equal politically, socio-economically and legally. Nevertheless, before the PTI-PAT duo could do meaningful damage, the PML-N-led government, having learnt from its past mistakes, rushed to the military to be rescued from so-called revolutionary forces. Interestingly, the latter too had pinned high hopes on the military than on its own muscle to bring change of structure in the country. The military, on its part, thought it irrational to directly intervene in politics for that would have caused political, legal and strategic implications of an unprecedented nature and scale. Moreover, since the government was already functionally weakened, courtesy the political proxies, it was more pragmatic to continue with the unreduced principalship of Pakistan with agents — politicians — doing the bidding. In other words, there was no rational reason to kill the killed. Imran Khan, however, failed to observe this due largely to his maximalist approach wrapped in a staunch individualised ego. Dr Qadri, to the contrary, acted liked a good medical doctor, which he is not though, by feeling the pulse of the political patient (the government). The health of the government was reminiscent of a patient suffering from hepatitis C and B at the same time. Qadri left the matter to God and left for Canada only to recently return to Pakistan to part ways with the PTI. On the other hand, however, Imran Khan wanted to further dissect the government. The latter acted reactively like a fragile and mentally unstable patient. In such a mutually distrustful situation, resorting to a media war on the parts of the government and the PTI after November 30 (and the Faisalabad encounter) is understandable.

More importantly, however, in the wake of the Faisalabad encounter, Mr Khan seems to have understood the nature of the silent killer: the disease of political mismanagement and belligerent egotism that the government suffers from. This probably is the reason why Imran Khan has tactfully constrained his maximalist agenda of getting rid of the prime minister and the government. Khan’s calculation is also partly based on his past experiments with the country’s legal machinery. His party’s top leadership, in particular people with a legal background such as Hamid Khan, seems to have concluded that confrontational politics with the non-military institutions of the state, especially the apex judiciary, is going to be counterproductive. After all, by accusing all and sundry, except the khakis, the PTI will make more enemies than friends. The latter do matter in politics as they do in cricket. This precisely is the reason behind the PTI’s mild tone towards the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner, and that too on the behest of the country’s Supreme Court (SC).

From the above mentioned, what can safely be concluded is that the PTI, from today onwards, will go with a two-pronged approach in terms of adding a minimalist to the (revised) maximalist strategy. The maximalist shall stand the same: accusing the Sharif government of rigging, accusing non-PTI (and possibly non-PAT) politicians and a section of bureaucrats and judges of financial corruption, and establishing a ‘new’ Pakistan. The minimalist will centre around the establishment of an independent judicial commission to probe into the alleged rigging and challenging the findings of the commission under, and not above, the law of the land. In between the two approaches lies strategic space that can be availed by the government and the PTI to reach a negotiated settlement of the issues at hand.

If the two parties re-rank their political choices in terms of an agreement on the terms of reference, the current political stalemate, in my view, can be resolved peacefully. In this respect, the government of the day must realise that political issues cannot be resolved through the use of force. Similarly, the PTI leadership must also understand that it cannot win over its opponent through street agitation. In the current context, the latter though has the potential to give birth to disorderly rule in the short run; its repetitive and provocative use would only add to the legal, if not political, cost for the PTI. Hence, if the two sides are sincere to democracy, constitutional rule and the socio-economic development of Pakistan, this is the right time to make and maintain peace. Otherwise, lawlessness, socio-economic regression and authoritarianism loom large regardless of old and new Pakistan.

The writer is a DAAD fellow and is the author of Military Agency, Politics and the State in Pakistan. He works as an assistant professor at Iqra University, Islamabad and tweets @ ejazbhatty