One is reminded of Justice Athar Minallah’s words in his order in the 4:3 Supreme Court decision last month: courts were “first approached to compel the speaker to accept the resignations and when they were accepted the courts were again approached to have the decision reversed”. Justice Minallah was referring to the PTI’s decision to quit from the National Assembly. This is something many have been pointing out ever since the April 2022 vote of no-confidence and the PTI’s decision to resign en masse from the National Assembly. First, the PTI celebrated its resignations. The PDM government kept asking the party to return to parliament but Imran Khan refused, calling it a sham parliament. When the PDM government started accepting resignations selectively, the PTI insisted all its resignations be accepted simultaneously. But then – in a classic case of U-Turnism – the PTI went to court challenging the acceptance of resignations. And now we seem to be right back at square one: the PTI ‘celebrating’ a court decision that calls their resignations null and void. If only irony had a face.
At hand is the Lahore High Court’s decision on Friday, declaring the acceptance of the resignations of 72 PTI members of the National Assembly “null and void”. These resignations include those of Fawad Chaudhry, Hammad Azhar, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pervaiz Khattak, among others. On Friday, PTI lawyer Barrister Ali Zafar hailed the court’s decision as historic and suggested it would also resolve the current political crisis. According to the PTI lawyer, once the PTI MNAs are back in the National Assembly, Imran Khan would be able to “play his role for the nation as the opposition leader in parliament”. How does one read this in the context of all that is going on with the PTI: its members jumping ship daily; its top-tier leadership behind bars or facing court cases, its supremo making contradictory statements? For all intents and purposes, the PTI project is facing music it had composed itself.
Some feel the party manages to get some face-saving with such verdicts – a way out, if you will. And, while no one in a democracy would – or should – say no to compromise, something Imran may be learning at supersonic speed right now, the spot his party finds itself in may be too tight for it to just try a dial back of the clock. The May 9 incidents have left little room for anyone in the PTI to dictate any terms, regardless of court decisions. Perhaps the PDM may still want a calm to finally descend on politics in the country. But going by what analyses say of the current times, the mass arrests and detentions don’t exactly spell an easy walk for the former ruling party. A bigger question that always looms where Imran Khan is concerned is whether he will walk back the statements he himself had made regarding parliament and government as they stand right now? To date, he and his party have been calling the ruling coalition a cabal of crooks. Even if in opposition, sitting in parliament will be granting legitimacy to it. Is Imran willing to finally sit across from those he has called worse than terrorists? If this is a desperate last-minute attempt at dialing back the dismantling of the party, one wonders whether it may be better for the PTI chairman to verbalize these sentiments himself. For a party that even saw the Charter of Democracy as a kind of an ‘NRO’, this may be a spin beyond even its capable narrative-building skills. There is huge mistrust regarding Imran Khan and the PTI and for it to be somehow healed, many decisions will need to be rethought and many words will need to be walked back. Pro-democracy voices have always encouraged compromise so that the system – however flawed it may be – is saved. But for many, this time, the PTI may have burnt its boats along with state property.