Acting like an extremist network, the Tehrik Labbaik Pakistan used violence to enforce a countrywide gridlock on Monday and partly on Tuesday. TLP’s baton-wielding workers stopped traffic at numerous points on the National Highway and the GT Road while roads within the provinces were also blocked. Ambulances carrying those in urgent need of treatment had to wait for hours. Trucks carrying oxygen cylinders faced delays in reaching hospitals. The violent protests have projected a negative image of the country abroad. It was an irony that while Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was in Germany seeking an enhancement of economic ties, at home the TLP was demanding the expulsion of the ambassador of France.
The TLP has been mollycoddled too long in return for performing dubious functions. In 2017, despite being a miniscule network of zealots, it was allowed to besiege Islamabad while speeches delivered at the TLP’s sit-in highlighted the PML(N)’s perceived deviation from Islamic principles. In the 2018 elections the extremist network nominated its candidates in key constituencies to wean away religious voters from the PML(N).
In 2018 the PTI government released Asia Bibi, who had been accused of blasphemy, on the Supreme Court’s orders. This led an overconfident TLP to take recourse to agitation. The government launched a countrywide crackdown on the TLP, cutting the network down to size.
It was a blunder by the PTI government to let the TLP march on Islamabad in November 2020, followed by another blunder when it agreed to hold talks with the extremist organisation that demanded severing diplomatic ties with France and expelling its ambassador. The TLP chief should have been told that he had no business issuing ultimatums to an elected government. Instead the government agreed to hold talks with the TLP and sought two months to get Parliament’s approval. At the expiry of the time limit, the PTI government held another session of talks with the extremist network where it promised to get Parliament’s permission by October 20.
It is time for the government to take a firm stand. The Prime Minister needs to assert that he does not take dictation from mobs and that policy decisions are taken by the elected government as and when needed. Hopefully, none is using the TLP this time as a thin edge of the wedge.
