Daily Times

First, the army chief had to step up and take note of the anti-military hatred being propagated on social media by some of PTI’s more passionate supporters, without naming any names of course, and he went as far as to say that attempts to drive a wedge between the people and the military would never be allowed to succeed. And now the chief justice of the supreme court has also thrown his hands up in frustration, asking why the court should decide on political crises when its decisions are criticised at public rallies.

All this is meant to put a very obvious question mark over Imran Khan’s new policy of colliding or wanting to collide, with the most central pillars of the state. He’s clearly very upset that the supreme court did not stay out of his way when his party was subverting the constitution to save its skin in the matter of the no-confidence motion, and he’s also pretty upset that the military did not step in to put (then) opposition parties in their place.

And it’ll probably take him a while to digest the fact that the man who was on a supposed mission to save the country ended up becoming the first prime minister to be dismissed by a constitutional no-confidence vote in parliament.

But all that is already in the past. The future should not revolve around confrontation among the pillars that the state stands on. Everybody, including politicians booted out unceremoniously and unconstitutionally by military rulers in the past, has always been careful about upsetting some very sensitive fault lines in the country’s body politic.

And Imran wasn’t even disposed of unconstitutionally. Everything was perfectly legal. In fact, the only infringements of the constitution and the law of the land were carried out by the former PM and his party members. For them to target state institutions, so unfairly and purely out of frustration and anger, is very unprofessional and in very bad taste.

Now, after the military, the judges have also taken note of the slander about them, push is definitely coming to shove. And since Imran Khan, and therefore PTI is in no mood to back down, one can only wonder how the party will react on the street once its own antics push the judges to open the rule book once again. *