The ‘revolution’ is over

So the ‘revolution’ seems to have ended before it even began. Supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan would say that is a harsh way of looking at things – of what eventually happened to the protest march in Islamabad.

Eventually, the government and the state decided to crack down on the protesters decisively with the result that by early morning on November 27, the protest was over. A majority of the protesters had been dispersed and there had been some arrests.

The leaders of the march – prominent among them the former prime minister’s wife Bushra Bibi – retreated; the government said they had fled. Newspaper reports suggest the retreat began when on the evening of November 26 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur told the protesters that they should “go home, have dinner and come back tomorrow”. He must have known that since they had come from KP going home would mean the protest was effectively over. Once that happened, both Bushra Bibi and the chief minister and other leaders went back to the relative safety of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

There is also the question of why the protest ended as soon as it did, on the night of November 26. Once the protesters had reached D Chowk, the issue was how long they would stay there. The longer they stayed there, the stronger their position would be vis-a-vis gaining their leader’s release from jail. Then the question turned to the costs of staying – who would pay for the food for thousands of people, and logistics, and even accommodation?

The most important question in all this would be: who would pay for all of this? And then one thought of the dharna in 2014, when the PTI camped at D Chowk for over four months. Clearly, the situation now was different and no one was coming forward and paying for all this. And so it became evident that, contrary to what some PTI supporters comfortably sitting overseas had been suggesting, there was no division among the powers that be in how to handle the PTI or its protests.

Now, on November 27, after a failed ‘inquilab’ and with its party leaders clearly beating a hasty retreat, and its primary objective of Imran Khan’s release not achieved, the party is in a greatly weakened position. The likelihood that Imran Khan will be released from jail anytime soon has been irrevocably pushed back. The strategy of calling a protest march to descend on Islamabad and besiege it has failed. It has also shown that the bulk of the support came from the province where the PTI has had a government for the last 11 years, so much so that one could argue that the party’s main support is now confined to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Per reports, eight precious lives were also lost – four Rangers personnel, two Islamabad policemen and two PTI protesters – and several dozen injured on both sides. The former prime minister has lost whatever bargaining position he had as a result of his supporters descending on the federal capital. As for KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur, he should be thankful if governor’s rule isn’t imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since the federal government may seriously consider decisive action to quell his repeated forays into Islamabad.

One clear winner on the PTI side out of the protest march is Bushra Bibi. She clearly took charge of the protest and it was reported that even as Imran Khan had agreed to a change in venue for the protest away from D Chowk, she resisted and did not give in. On the way to the site of the protest, a couple of days earlier, she addressed PTI supporters from Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur’s convoy and said would stay with the marchers till her ‘last breath’. Then she released another video clip – this time from inside a car – claiming that she had entered Islamabad and that others should also reach there as soon as possible.

Eventually, however, she also had to basically flee to the relative safety of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – but it would be fair to say that she has wrested initiative away from Aleema Khan as far as controlling the party is concerned.

The biggest losers in all this will be the PTI’s supporters. By and large, they will feel greatly disappointed and dejected at having achieved nothing from the protest march. In fact, if anything, the federal government has come out stronger and the establishment will become even more inflexible in dealing with any PTI strategy that seeks an early release of the former prime minister. PTI supporters may also wonder that if all this chaos and commotion can’t get their leader out of jail what else will. And then the reality may dawn that he isn’t going to get out jail anytime soon.

One may argue that at the end of the day, it was a fight by the PTI’s base in KP for the PTI’s ‘stolen mandate’ which happened in Punjab and not on KP’s seats. What irony!

The writer is a journalist based in Karachi. He tweets/posts @omar_quraishi and can be reached at: omarrquraishi@gmail.com