Daily Times

Craving for chaos in
tranquility is a knack few people are endowed with. Sheikh Rasheed of the Awami Muslim League is perhaps one of them. Rasheed is still optimistic about finding another opportunity to launch a second round of political commotion after having lost the first one, the dharna (sit-in) last year. Embedded in this optimism of disruption is the salvation of his kind of politics. Further entrenched in his kind of politics is the sustenance of the talk shows conducted on electronic media. The vicious cycle goes on.
Rasheed is the proponent of jalao aur gherao (set things ablaze and disrupt life) politics and the same he propagated before and during the dharna, the movement that was initiated in Lahore on August 14, 2014 — almost a year ago — and ended in Islamabad. He was an exultant go-between for Dr Tahirul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the then conjoined twins. Rasheed convinced the PAT to act like a rocket to propel the spaceship of the PTI into the mainstream space of Pakistani politics. The PAT served the purpose and consequently perished while the PTI is still wandering around trying to find a suitable portal.
Retrospectively, if the PAT had not stealthily planned (in London) to join hands with the PTI, the Model Town tragedy would not have taken place. The deceased became innocently a victim of the grand scheme set up to topple the sitting government on the allegations of systematic rigging in the 2013 elections. The PAT’s workers have not yet held their leaders accountable for putting them in harm’s way, but then the PAT’s leaders also think that they were fooled by certain intermediaries including Rasheed who had assured PAT leaders of the triumph of the agitation against the government. Actually, the PAT’s ability to stage a demonstration was exploited astutely to serve the political purposes of the PTI.
In the elections of 2013, the slogan that practically worked wonders for the PTI was not ‘change’ but ‘stop drone strikes’ on the tribal areas. It was the anti-drone strikes stance that galvanised the PTI’s popularity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the expense of the popularity of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI) and Awami National Party (ANP), which were denounced publicly as complacent with drone strikes. The PTI cashed in on the anti-drone sentiment of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s voters. Not to say of making its agitation registered, the PTI has not even mentioned the recent drone strike in North Waziristan in its political rallies, for instance in Haripur. This is where the catch lies. In the general elections of 2018, the political competitors of the PTI will be back in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with new vigour, as the number of drone strikes has already reduced significantly without any active role of the PTI, which in turn will have to rely on its performance and not on the anti-drone sentiments of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s voters to win a plurality vote there.
The dharna was a blot on the face of politics in Pakistan not only because it was centered on false (political and electoral) accusations but also because it was sponsored purportedly by the military and intelligence agencies. The names of two former director generals of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and three corps commanders have been bandied about. To that, astonishingly, the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) is silent, and this implies their involvement in the event, which kept the whole country hostage for more than 100 days. The attention of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was diverted towards devising ways to make the dharna successful, instead of taking security measures to protect the school in Peshawar the terrorist attack on which created a crisis bigger than the dharna crisis, to end the dharna eventually. In fact, the dharna could not engender even the judicial commission, the formation of which had already been announced by Prime Minister (PM) Nawaz Sharif. The dharna could achieve nothing but producing another crisis of absenteeism of the PTI’s legislators from the National Assembly. By not accepting resignations in the name of political reconciliation, the speaker of the NA has set a wrong precedent, the repercussions of which will haunt the National Assembly in the coming days. Unfortunately, the PTI’s resigned legislatures have escaped retribution for making a wrong decision.
Despite the prevalent political quiet, certain questions still remain unanswered. In the general elections of 2013, Imran Khan kept his Lahore constituency, NA-122, unattended and remained active in canvassing for Rasheed in NA-55 Rawalpindi. Will Khan repeat the same in 2018? Several political parties are blamed, derided and rejected for being supported by the military establishment. Will similar be the fate of the PTI? Millions of rupees were spent on the dharna. How could the source of that money be accounted for even if not being demanded currently by the PTI’s rivals? The ISPR is always vocal on the question of the military’s image in the public. How will the ISPR defend the alleged involvement of military officers in a plot to topple the sitting elected government through instigating other political and non-political actors into an agitation or dharna?
Over the years, the PTI has learnt the politics of agitation. Will the PTI be able to learn and showcase the politics of decency till the next general elections in 2018? The PAT must have learnt many lessons in the dharna hiccup. Will the PAT articulate those lessons to edify the public politically? The electronic media needs salt and pepper on talk shows (so that anchorpersons earn their living). Will any anchorperson ask Rasheed — the media’s darling — to mend his ways for the sake of democracy? Rasheed provoked people to wreak havoc on peace and order. Will the government be able to neutralise him next time? Political evolution is necessary in grooming politicians in the skill of politics. Will the process of democratic evolution keep on deriving its strength from the disparaging brand of politics?

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com