A good day for PM Khan

ISLAMABAD: Thursday could not have ended better for Prime Minister Imran Khan whose government was seemingly heading into a perfect storm only 24 hours earlier.

As Islamabad’s Red Zone was swarmed by federal government employees on Wednesday demanding substantial pay raise to deal with mounting inflation and law enforcement forces resorting to excessive teargasing the protesters, the government looked wrapped up in a muddle of its own making. Images of a totally smoked out Red Zone went viral on social media with most TV programmes discussing the logic of such blatant highhandedness.

Only a few hundred metres away, the country’s apex court was probing the top law officer of the administration if the Prime Minister has actually decided to dole out Rs500 million per parliamentarian in development aid just days before a controversial Senate elections. The issue of years-old videos showing KP MPs accepting millions in ‘bribes’ before the last Senate elections was also thrown in the melee.

And if all the above was not enough, a latent threat from a religious group to march on the capital next week was hanging in the air. Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) was blaming the government of going back on its agreement signed on 16 November 2020 – an agreement that many say is bound have international implications.

But as Thursday came to a close, the 5-member Supreme Court bench disposed off CMA No 490 of 2021, accepting the Prime Minister’s signed endorsement saying “it is submitted that no public funds are being distributed to parliamentarians by the federal government and any report to the contrary in the media is incorrect. No money will be handed over to the legislators to carry out development schemes.” The court saw no reason to further proceed with the matter.

Another relief accompanied the disposal of the case for the Prime Minister. Justice Faez Isa, one of the five judges hearing the case presented a few documents he received from an anonymous source for the court’s record. The court discussed the documents sent through a WhatsApp with the attorney general and then decided not to entertain them, as no one was there to take the responsibility of the veracity of the documents or whatever was contained in them.

The Chief Justice of Pakistan then observed that to uphold the “principle of un-biasness and impartiality” Judge Isa should not hear matters involving the Prime Minister of Pakistan in the “in the interest of justice” considering he (Justice Isa) had already filed a petition against the Prime Minister.

Late Wednesday night negotiations by three government troubleshooters – Sheikh Rashid, Pervez Khattak and Ali Muhammad Khan – also resolved the tussle with government employees by managing a mutually agreeable solution to the salary raise issue. Last but not the least, Sheikh Rashid and Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Pir Noorul Haq Qadri also managed to ward off the TLP threat to march on the capital through an updated agreement that would provide the government a much-needed breather until 20 April 2021. So proverbially all’s well that ends well for Imran Khan for now.