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Saturday March 30, 2024

Papers, petitions and foot soldiers

By our correspondents
October 21, 2016

Imran Khan has maintained all along that his only wish is for there to be accountability over the revelations in the Panama Papers leaks. On Thursday, he got his wish as the Supreme Court started hearings on five petitions relating to the matter. These petitions include the formation of a judicial commission, the potential disqualification of Nawaz Sharif and inquiries by investigation agencies into the owners of offshore companies. Analysts and commentators are of the view that if Imran Khan has any faith in the judiciary, he should now accept that there is no good reason to go ahead with his plan to shutdown Islamabad on November 2. But then there are those who will say that Imran’s true aim is to ascend to the office of the prime minister himself and he is not one to let respect for democratic institutions to stop him. As we saw during the 2014 dharna in Islamabad, the PTI is not above using intimidation to get its way. Shutting down the capital, especially now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the petitions, will be yet another bad decision by the PTI since it will look like the party is using the street to affect the SC proceedings. This of course appears to be one of the aims. The government and the prime minister have welcomed the Supreme Court’s intervention and this attitude should now be translated into acts that can be seen as manifestations of the ‘welcome’ extended to the SC.

If the anti-corruption slogans of the PTI had even an iota of sincerity about them, we would be seeing a different PTI strategy, but as an ‘impatient’ fragment of the status quo, Imran can only do what he is doing with the ‘godsend’ that the Panama leaks are. No matter what one says or thinks about how the government bungled matters in this case, the PTI’s argument with the government over the terms of reference for the proposed Panama Papers leaks commission is far too ‘arcane’ to ignite public passion and does not justify an attempt to dislodge the government. There are now reports that the PTI is using, for the Islamabad protest, foot soldiers from a madressah its government is funding in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The reference here appears to be to Maulana Samiul Haq’s Darul Uloom Haqqania, which the PTI is funding to the tune of Rs300 million over a period of two years in return for carrying out reforms. The madressah is known for militant sympathies and connections. If this is true, then the potential for the protests in Islamabad to spiral out of control has only increased. If this is true, then the PTI and its government, the Punjab government, the federal government and the security apparatus of the state all are answerable to the people for what may happen and for what can and should be done to prevent it. If this is true, it only shows the extent that Imran Khan is willing to go to while playing out his fantasies of attaining power without any regard for what damage it causes not just the government but the country. We do hope this is not true. However, the PTI and Imran Khan have made it clear how they are once again ready to take any step to overthrow the government.

This time, the PTI is not the only party going on the offensive. The PPP has announced its own plans to take out a long march, with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari making a list of demands. Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Ahmed Shah has followed up with a plague-on-both-your-houses speech, accusing both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan of hurting democracy. The PPP, whose electoral base has been reduced to rural Sindh, is hoping Imran’s over-the-top theatrics and Nawaz’s various scandals alienate the public, creating space for the PPP to once again be in a position to compete all over the country. But as the more responsible member of the opposition, Shah has also made it clear that, unlike the PTI, it does not want to disrupt democracy by overthrowing the government. Nawaz Sharif, too, does not seem ready to give up the fight. In an aggressive speech after he was elected ‘unopposed’ as the PML-N president, he predicted his party would gain power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since Imran is interested only in the streets and not the problems of the province. But we hardly need a Sharif to tell us that the correct path for the PTI would have been to focus on governance. But it has now committed itself fully to ambitions and actions that, in the long run, will not let it grow as a genuine political force. If only the possible consequences were limited to the PTI’s own fate.