Blocking no-trust move fraught with dangers

In an ideal world, instead of taking a hawkish turn to upend the whole political system, Prime Minister Imran Khan must have shown magnanimity and sportsmanship by allowing tabling of no-confidence motion (NCM). And also instead of witch-hunting and seizing dissenting party MNAs, he should have allowed them to vote as per their conscience in the NCM.

However, that doesn’t seem to be happening after threatening calls by the PM for “mob justice” through rallies and the Interior Minister’s call for Governor Rule in Sindh.

Worse, the PM has leaned into fear and intimidation tactics to smear his opponents and the dissenting MNAs.

Attack on the Sindh House was in line with the PM’s strategy to go violent on his apparent way out of power. But, these tactics will have dangerous consequences for him and his party. Demagogy and populist aggressive behaviour cannot take one far enough.

Political militancy was never weaponised by PPP’s head late Benazir Bhutto Shaheed and PMLN’s chief Nawaz Sharif when they were sacked on several occasions. They knew that they would be re-elected if removed from power. This is why they went back to the masses and kept their vote bank intact.

On the contrary, the PM seems less hopeful to return to power at a later stage, so abusing all and sundry after the conceivable outcome of the latest petition on Article 63A, provided the SC delivers judgment against his expectations. The 18th Amendment already has made the party head an equivalent to a dictator in running the party affairs.

The Prime Minister’s latest call to collect what the PTI claims one million people in D-Chowk on March 27 shows he will not go quietly. The worst he would do would start calling names of institutions – after losing power – as a reaction to the latter’s neutrality.

Ironically, Sheikh Rashid is his adviser who sunk Gen Pervez Musharaf’s government by reportedly advising him to impose emergency as COAS, instead of as President, which eventually led to Musharaf’s fall from power.

This time around, Sheikh Rashid again advised Imran Khan on extreme measures like Governor’s Rule in Sindh and imposition of emergency etc. to hasten the PM’s ouster. But, the best advice Sheikh Rashid could have given to the PM was to dissolve the National Assembly as well as provincial assemblies before the submission of NCM. In other words, the dissolution of assemblies was the only peaceful and dignified way out of the present crisis for the PM.

Any adventurism to block the NCM is fraught with danger to internal security and will likely result in violence and bloodshed.

After the dissenting MNAs in Sindh House coming out in the open against the PM, showed the party had melted away. The number is not relevant at this point of analysis.

It was clear that dissenting PTI MNAs plus allies were inclined to support the opposition’s NCM.

In the worst-case scenario, even If these MNAs were denotified, the strength of assembly would reduce and the government would still fall as the numbers required would be less than 172 then.

Given his reaction, the PM seems to have understood that he has no chance to survive the NCM unless he succeeds in convincing the establishment to abandon neutrality which is very unlikely when the security institutions have time and again professed to stay away from political interference. This is why PM’s outburst — “only animals can be neutral” — was his obvious frustration directed towards the establishment.

With the allies conceivably switching sides, he may resign in the Islamabad public meeting on the eve of NCM, but it is a matter of conjecture. Since he has borrowed from the playbook of President Trump, expect anything from chaos, polarization and to speeches against the institutions. He has thought through the 90s model – “do not let government function while in opposition”.

Posterity will judge PM Imran Khan as grand on rhetoric but short on delivery, hence pushing the country back to a two-party system, while reviving PMLN and PPP, effectively.

Jan Achakzai is a geopolitical analyst, a politician from Balochistan and an ex-adviser to the Balochistan government on media and strategic communication. He tweets @Jan_Achakzai