Imran Khan’s beaming face told the whole story when he left to see the army chief on Thursday night
SAUDI ARABIA: Imran Khan’s beaming face told the whole story when he left to see the army chief on Thursday night — and the fact is that it was even more beaming when he returned to his airconditioned container. Why have dozens of meetings between his party leaders and representatives of the ruling and opposition parties, frequent high-level contacts between top leadership, frantic calls here and there to calm the situation, not yielded any result so far? Why he and the other sit-in orator, Tahirul Qadri, kept rejecting any possibility to find a solution within a legal framework? Perhaps they are just puppets whose strings are being pulled by their masters, parroting the scrapping of the whole system in the name of revolution and ‘Naya Pakistan’.
Earlier, the government announced that it would form a judicial commission to look into allegations that the 2013 elections were rigged. Both Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri rejected the offer saying that they did not trust the government to let the commission work independently.
What has the two-week-long protest/sit-in given to Pakistan? It has shown a trailer of increasing trend of fascism wherein political opponents are abused, ridiculed, where street language is given a new meaning.
Not only the state machinery but the whole country has been under siege by shouting, dancing and abusing crowds encircling the parliament and other government buildings in Islamabad. Do we even know that during the last two weeks terrorists attacked airbases near Quetta, that the Line of Control is again ‘alive’ with almost daily shelling, that visits by foreign dignitaries have been deferred or cancelled, that the rupee has depreciated drastically and that the stock market has also suffered a sharp decline?
Life goes on with the rhythm of a soft coup. All those who say that the military will soon be in the driving seat should know that this is the era of unmanned driverless vehicles.
Masood Khan, Jubail
Published in The Express Tribune, August 31st, 2014.
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