AT PENPOINT
Now that Eid is over, the country is about to see whether he Pakistan Tehrik Insaf has enough strength to launch a movement that would lead to the release of its founder, Imran Khan, though the first test will be whether it can cobble together an opposition alliance that will launch a bigger challenge to the government than the PTI has done in its solo efforts so far.
Throughout the holy month, the nation was left to observe the PTI’ wooing of the smaller opposition parties. The prospect being held out was of an opposition alliance able to exert sufficient street power to achieve the PTI’s aims.
The PTII is probably now learning the hardheaded reason for political politeness. It is not because politicians are members of the same club, as because you never know when you may need them. There may have been a schoolboy’s satisfaction for Imran and his followers for having called Maulana Fazlur Rerhman ‘Maulvi Diesel’, but now that is coming back to haunt the PTI. If the coalition falls through, one of the main reasons will be because the JUI(F) does not trust the PTI, with one of the main reasons being that the PTI has been derisive about the party leader, and that too without having even charged him for corruption during its own tenure in office,
Another reason why the JUI(F) will be wary of the PTI is because it is competitive with it in KP. In the local body elections there in 2021 and 2022, the JUI(F) had done well. Though that success was not repeated in the 2024 general elections, it is one of the reasons both parties are wary of each other,
The PTI may not view the JUI(F) as a perfect fit, but it does not really have that much choice. The JUI(F) has street power in the sense that its leaders include madressa leaders who have large student bodies at their command, but the PTI has its own kind of streetpower, though that has not yielded the result the PTI wanted. The PTI has been focussed on getting Imran released. But all its various efforts seem to have come to no avail so far.
The last hurrah seems to have been in October at the abortive D-Chowk rally, which ended with teargassing and firing, but no evidence of anyone being killed, or Imran being released. That was supposed to be a ‘do-or-die’ effort, but it was succeeded by a call for civil disobedience. That fizzled out, and dissolved into government-PTI talks which ultimately went nowhere.
One view of the alliance-building and possible movement is that it is because the opposition has to keep active during the current tenure, and has no issues it can raise. There is always the economy, but the upward trend in economic indicators does not allow the PTI to go after the government the way the PML(N) went after the PTI government. The default scare of 2023 has long been over, and after the last letters to the IMF about elections, the PTI seems to have stopped even trying.
Is the PTI to be allowed to convert terrorism into an issue which it can refuse cooperation on? Any movement after Eid will inevitably be linked.to it, just as the PTI is linked now to getting Imran released.
There has been no real evidence of a decline in PTTI support, except perhaps for the disheartening effect of failure, or the absence of any event that might cause it to be rejuvenated. PTI infighting has been such as to cause concern, especially for any prospective allies. The prospect of an opposition movement has caused concern for the government, especially after the PTI’s failure to attend the parliamentary National Security Committee’s meeting on the Jaffar Express train hijack.
One problem that the PTI faced because of the hijack is that the focus on terrorism in general caused a garish light to be thrown on KP, which is also in the grip of terrorism, though not separatists, but religious militants. Apart from the fact that the PTI has held the reins of the KP government since 2013, and thus cannot escape at least some responsibility for that province’s law and order situation, the PTI’s provincial chapter is facing party infighting, with KP CM Ali Amin Gandapur facing increasing criticism, which did not disappear when he was stripped of the provincial presidency, which was given to the rival Junaid Akbar, the MNA who is likely to vie for the CM’s slot. The recent call for the resignation of KP Speaker Babar Swat is another indication of a controversy the party could have done without.
The combination also is not right. The PTI needs to break the PPP away from the PML(N) if it wishes to bring down the Shehbaz government, and the JUI(F) is also crucial in this process, but the JUI(F) is assumed not to be an entirely free agent. Even if it is not, in the phrase Imran made so popular, entirely ‘on the same page’, it is supposed to be largely so. These days, the PPP is also on the ‘same page’. So is the PML(N), but the PM, Mian Shehbaz Sharif, is coming up against the three-year limit that has affected every PM since Muhammad Khan Junejo onwards.
However, there has been one change since the Musharraf Martial Law. From 1988, the National Assembly went with the PM. Since 2008, the PM has gone, but the National Assembly has completed its term. The party remained the same, except in the last Parliament, where the PDM replaced the PTI. It may require a similar alliance to replace the present government. There is a PTI demand for fresh elections if the present government goes, for it seems to realize that joining hands with the PPP might get Imran out of jail, but seems no realistic way of getting Imran to become PM, except through fresh elections. He could, after being released, get into the National Assembly though a by-election, and then become PM, but would be easier for a fresh election to yield a PTI majority, and for Imran to take the office of PM unassisted by any other party, preferably with a two-thirds majority enabling him to repeal the 26th Amendment and fix other flaws in the Constitution which prevented him from duly prosecuting the Sharifs and the Zardaris, and other opponents, for corruption.
The only hope the PTI has of getting the PM’s office in this Parliament would be if there is a veto of the President and the PM being father-and-son, the veto as was applied in the Punjab, which left Hamza Shehbaz nowhere after his brief tenure in 2013 as Punjab CM. The PTI is also handicapped by the fact that the present government is unaffected by any corruption scandals. Whether or not the previous PTI governments were guilty of any corruption, tales were being told during the PTI’s tenure of corruption and cronyism, with the prosecution only coming after its ouster.
The PTI has probably not mended its fences with the establishment, and though it is courting the JUI(F), which has of late followed an establishment playbook, there are still problems. The Katlang incident saw 11 people killed, according to the KP government, with the CM ordering an enquiry. The federal Information Minister said that there had been no civilian casualties, and that it had been an intelligence-based operation. The ISPR did not speak on the issue, issuing a press note about another IBO, in which three were killed, in Tora Dara in another district. PTI Secretary General Salman Akram Raja and Information Secretary Waqas Akram both tried to link the PTI to the incident, and express anger at the death of civilians. The PTI has thus set itself up for a replay of the October D-Chowk firing, with the government denying civilian casualties, and the PTI KP government in the forefront of efforts to prove otherwise. The addition is that the issue is terrorism, and the establishment is not impressed by this blame game.
Is the PTI to be allowed to convert terrorism into an issue which it can refuse cooperation on? Any movement after Eid will inevitably be linked.to it, just as the PTI is linked now to getting Imran released.
