Politics by raids

On a day that held some promise of negotiations between the country’s warring political parties finally moving ahead, a late-night raid on former Punjab chief minister Pervaiz Elahi’s residence may have moved things right back a few squares. Elahi’s son Rasikh Elahi has moved the Lahore High Court (LHC) against the Friday-night police action at his father’s property in Lahore and the subsequent arrest of more than a dozen people. According to Pervaiz Elahi’s lawyer, the police had intended to arrest his client, despite the fact that – per Elahi and his lawyer – a bail was granted in the case. Officials from the anti-corruption department had demanded to see the court’s bail order during the raid while the police have claimed they only responded to provocation from inside the house. As the PTI condemns the raid, with PTI chief Imran Khan calling it an ‘illegal raid’ with no regard for the presence of Elahi’s family members including women, the party is not alone in its condemnation. Political analysts, human rights defenders and legal experts have all rightly called the Friday-night action an overkill for absolutely no reason.

Unfortunately, the raid came hours after the PTI and the coalition government held talks on election dates, talks that are said to have proceeded without any major fireworks. By all means, the optics presented by the bizarre police action on Pervaiz Elahi’s house cannot be defended. As legal experts took to Twitter to register outrage at what had transpired, political observers too called this a clear case of political victimization. If there is a case against Elahi – and some have clarified that there may just be one – and if he had taken bail before arrest, what was Friday night about? And even without a bail, was the manner and timing of the raid justifiable? There have already been court decisions against such arrests in any case. We have said this before and we will say this (yet) again: such tactics have never worked to anyone’s advantage. Persecution cannot possibly be the only tactic our political parties can come up with. The PTI’s years in power were marked by a consistent display of impunity, sham trials, arrests and arm-twisting of political opponents subjected to witch-hunts. Does the coalition government led by the PDM also wish to go down this unsavoury route? Especially since they had when out of power well-articulated the futility of such undemocratic measures.

That all this has happened just when people were hoping an ice-breaker in the form of negotiations may help move the country forward is doubly unfortunate. The coming week already promises to be full of more dramatic turns: with an eight-member larger bench of the Supreme Court resuming hearings into petitions challenging the Supreme Court Practice and Procedure Bill, 2023; and the government and PTI meeting again on Tuesday (May 2) for their final round of talks. Coupled with a constant barrage of audio leaks – this time allegedly featuring former chief justice Saqib Nisar’s son Najam Saqib – and reportedly former speakers of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa filing petitions for the restoration of the respective assemblies, hope for calm might seem a bit optimistic at the moment. But calm is what is needed. Pakistan is no stranger to midnight raids, political arrests, street agitation. The past few years have especially been a political rollercoaster. It is time to allow a nation already reeling from inflation and a selfish political elite some respite. Power that comes through brute force is no power, something the PTI should have learnt and something the PDM and its allies need to understand. The only way out of the sticky mess every side is in is to resist the temptation to persecute political opponents or vie for attention as the blue-eyed parties of any institutional powerholders. For that, our political parties must unlearn and unpack years of subservience to institutions and see politicians as equal and important political rivals – but not enemies.