Daily Times

The whole country condemned the shameful incident in Medina the other day yet apart from just one or two senior leaders, barely a squeak came out of PTI. Indeed, earlier the party’s official Twitter account had in fact posted a celebratory message, predicting that soon “these people” would be unable to get out of their homes, but it was deleted when it became clear that not everybody was laughing. And going by the smirks that some PTI spokespersons were trying to hide as they pointed out that none of the hecklers were PTI members, they couldn’t have asked for anything better to offset their dwindling fortunes after Imran Khan’s unceremonious departure from the PM’s office.

Of course there’s no way to know for sure if the incident was planned or not, despite Sheikh Rashid’s usual predictions. But even if it did develop completely on its own, there’s still enough method in PTI’s madness that is pitting a big part of civil society against the most important state institutions to smell something amiss. Just the other day the Islamabad High Court (IHC) Chief Justice Athar Minallah had to reprimand an openly pro-PTI private TV channel for running “a systematic campaign based on an imaginary narrative to undermine the judiciary and damage the credibility of the judicial system in the eyes of the public”.

These are very serious issues and it is sadly very clear that we haven’t yet seen the last of this ugly trend. And, no matter how dirty Pakistani politics had been over the years and decades, it must be pointed out that it was never this toxic or poisonous before PTI came to power; especially before Imran Khan became the first Pakistani PM to be removed by a legal, constitutional vote of no confidence. And now PTI’s entire storyline hinges on discrediting not just the new government, but also the military and judiciary for supporting it. The more it succeeds in getting the public to revolt against them, the better its chances of coming back to power become. Otherwise, Imran Khan played his cards so poorly towards the end of his administration, needlessly upsetting constitutional provisions, that he has more or less lost his relevance without these provocations. *