A confrontation too far

PTI has announced that it is to delay its planned October 30 blockade of Islamabad until November 2

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf has announced that it is to delay its planned October 30 blockade of Islamabad until November 2 in order not to interfere with important Bar elections which is all very well but there are deep concerns. To call the actions that the PTI is proposing ‘peaceful’ is fallacious. The blockading, as in impeding the day-to-day working of government departments and the passage to and fro of normal business and their employees is far from peaceful. It is an aggressive intervention that is going to have consequences that are likely to be violent and potentially destructive, and the PTI must be aware of that.

The PTI has every right to protest about whatsoever it chooses, but the threat to close down the operations of governance is a dangerously high-risk strategy that could trigger instability not only in Islamabad but other parts of the country as well if the PTI decides to exercise its muscle on the streets. As recent rallies have shown the PTI still carries considerable street-weight. The party can bring hundreds of thousands on to the streets, and if it says that it will blockade the organs of governance in Islamabad then it has to be taken at face value.



For the government there are few options. Principal among those is the use of force and it may be that this is what the PTI is seeking to provoke. The government is duty bound to physically protect the offices of state. Alternatively the government could at least in part accede to some of the PTI demands for an inquiry specific to the Sharif family who maintain they have done no wrong — then allow that to be proven by inquiry. Another option would be to counter the blockade by the physical diversion of PTI convoys to areas outside the city centre — again with violent consequences. The Panama Papers are not going away, and that reality has to be reconciled with governance — and violent confrontation is going to solve nothing either.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19^th, 2016.

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