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Thursday March 28, 2024

PTI convention likely to say goodbye to Dharnas

ISLAMABAD: The ‘dharna’ convention of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), its major event since the end of its 126-day sit-in at the D-Chowk, being held on Sunday is unlikely to decide any major protest campaign.This will be Imran Khan’s main political activity before leaving for Saudi Arabia to perform religious rituals

By Tariq Butt
January 18, 2015
ISLAMABAD: The ‘dharna’ convention of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), its major event since the end of its 126-day sit-in at the D-Chowk, being held on Sunday is unlikely to decide any major protest campaign.
This will be Imran Khan’s main political activity before leaving for Saudi Arabia to perform religious rituals along with his wife. Subsequently, the newly married couple is likely to go to the United States. In this visit, the PTI chief also plans fund-raising for his hospital being built in Peshawar that needs Rs1 billion during the current month for completion in 2015.
Whatever the next ‘line of action’ that he will announce at his sit-in convention will be inhibited and restrained measures as he doesn’t wish to create any ‘hurdle’ in the renewed fight against terrorism. This was also clearly indicated in what he said at his presser. “The stage of (resuming) sit-in is over.”
The maximum that he will unfold will be a series of such conventions in different cities to keep up his anti-government drive alive. He thinks he achieved a lot as a result of the sit-in that needs to be preserved by keeping up political activities. Nobody will have any objection to this kind of movement if normal life is not disrupted.
However, neither his previous powerful agitation forced the government to accept his specific conditions for a Supreme Court judicial commission nor will his low-key protest prevail upon it to come to terms. Unless the two sides hammer out a mutually acceptable agreement, there are no prospects of any breakthrough.
Again on Saturday, Imran Khan claimed that Chaudhry Iftikhar Muhammad as chief justice of Pakistan and the then judge Khalilur Rehman Ramday had a ‘big hand’ in ensuring victory of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in the 2013 general elections. But he is not prepared to include their ‘conspiracy’ in the terms of reference for the judicial commission and is focusing on general irregularities and complaints about polls that he will subsequently paint as a big fraud to discredit the parliamentary polls.
When the government was under tremendous pressure, it was the appropriate time for the PTI to get the judicial commission constituted. But at the time Imran Khan preferred to hype his demands with the result that he failed to achieve what he cherished. Now when the pressure on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has tremendously gone away, he is unexpected to meet any substantial demands of the PTI.
However, the two sides can find a middle way to tide over this issue once and for all. This is possible only when they show flexibility. Imran Khan doesn’t realise that he is now in no position to put any great pressure on the government in the near future to get his demands accepted.
At his press conference, he shirked any responsibility of his Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government in ensuring security and protection of the bombed Army Public School (APS) Peshawar when he said the institution was under the control of the army and it is wrong to hold the KP administration responsible for its security. Established PTI accounts on the social networking website, Twitter, have taken exception to certain actions of the army.
However, Imran Khan rightly took on the government for failing to guarantee smooth fuel supply, creating an uncalled for crisis. Indeed, its performance on this count is very dismal. It was direly required to roll heads that the prime minister did minutes after his return from Saudi Arabia.
Suspension of four senior bureaucrats is alright but what about the petroleum minister, who headed this band. What was he doing when the situation was snowballing into a crisis? At least he needs a severe short shrift to come out of his slumber.
A quick investigation will be justified to determine as to how this crisis was generated so that those responsible are suitably punished. Unfortunately, it is height of incompetence that the concerned authorities failed to foresee the increase in fuel demand due to the closure of the CNG stations throughout Punjab.
Senior PTI leader Asad Umar, who assisted Imran Khan at his presser, aptly bemoaned the petroleum minister’s admission that he was not informed that the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) did not have money to purchase oil from the international suppliers, which led to the present shortage.
The long queues of vehicles, spread over even kilometers, before petrol pumps in several Punjab cities, are a great spectacle to give an idea about the level of governance. People’s rage is rising for not getting gasoline.
Imran Khan correctly ridiculed the government for having ‘experienced hands’ that, he said, were expected to make some improvement instead of goofing up issues that can be easily resolved with little attention.
“When the army is fighting against terrorism and its officers will preside over military courts, the government is left with taking care of other issues like fuel supply, electricity prices etc., but it has failed even on this count,” the PTI chief said. “As opposition, it is our right to raise questions about the performance of the government.”