Daily Times

The optics, as well as the politics surrounding PTI’s long march, would not have degenerated so quickly, even before the fateful day, if the government hadn’t gone off script and carried out late-night intimidatory raids. It’s extremely unfortunate and condemnable that a police officer was killed in the chaos in Lahore, of course, but such incidents only go to show that these tactics only add to the uncertainty and toxicity of the situation. Nobody expected PTI to back down after the imposition of Section 144 in three provinces and the federal capital, so all that has changed now is that the confrontation is expected to turn violent right at the outset.

To be fair, PTI’s been flirting with testing the limits of peaceful protest as well, and there’s a lot to suggest that party workers are prepared to go the extra mile, so to speak, if the government doesn’t readily cave in and call a fresh election like Imran Khan has demanded. Its past shows that it has no qualms about things like civil disobedience movements, calling on people to stop paying bills and state taxes, and this time they’ve been attacked by state institutions for not openly taking their side as well. So the situation has been made much worse, by all sides, even before the landmark protest.

The capital is now barricaded from all sides. Government officials who defend the march ban as necessary to keep the capital functioning normally must now explain how they will ensure business as usual when they have themselves cut off Islamabad from the rest of the country. All highways and motorways in and out of the city are also completely blocked. And the economy, which is not even on life support since the IMF abandoned it, will now sink even further.

All of Pakistan’s political elite, on both sides of the divide, should at least reflect on the effect of their actions on the common people as they prepare for what looks like a bitter showdown in and around Islamabad today. *