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Thursday March 28, 2024

Strange stance

By Editorial Board
November 11, 2018

Confused messaging has become the order of the day under the current government. One elected official frequently contradicts the other, with even the prime minister often not being on the same page as his ministers. This is worrying when it comes to such matters as going to the IMF for a loan; but it is downright terrifying when the same mixed signals are broadcast on the matter of violent extremism. Just a few days ago, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry was appreciative of the opposition parties for the constructive role they played in the government’s standoff against the extremists of the TLP. He praised them for backing the government and not using the incident to play politics.

Minister of State for Interior Shehryar Afridi doesn’t seem to have received the memo. In an extraordinarily bizarre attack on the opposition parties, he has claimed that activists of some of the parties, including the PML-N, were behind the protests and violence that erupted after the acquittal of Aasia Bibi. The minister has offered no evidence for this assertion, and has in fact even criticised politicians who have been attacking the violent group for their violent rhetoric against the state, saying that the TLP had apologised for their language. This is yet another example of the current leadership being unable to stay on message. The very first person to go after the TLP for its seditious language was in fact Prime Minister Imran Khan in a much-welcome televised address to the nation.

It has been unclear if the government signed what was essentially a surrender to the TLP because it was worried about the consequences of police action or for other reasons. Through his statement, Afridi has only managed to add to the confusion. For all the political differences between the mainstream parties, the one thing for which they need to maintain a united front is in the fight against extremism. For one of the top official in the land to blame these mainstream parties for being behind the extremism while seemingly absolving the extremists shows that the government does not have a coherent plan on the war against militancy and radicalisation, and is instead sticking to parochial political interests. One only has to go back one year to the Faizabad protests to see where the PTI stood on the issue of the TLP. One would have thought that it would be more responsible once in power.