The politics of protest & the pursuit of power
Imran needs to stand with democratic forces and not undermine the democratic system.
How this political moment in our checkered history will be viewed in hindsight was always going to depend on the point at which the vociferous round of protest demonstrations spearheaded by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri came to a close. Will it have opened the way to long-needed electoral reforms or will it turn out essentially to be a repeat of army intervention almost routinized into Pakistan’s political system. As of Saturday, the pendulum has swung dangerously close to the latter outcome. As Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) supporters advanced towards the Parliament House and the prime minister’s residence, mobilised by the fiery rhetoric of their leaders, the police response was heavy-handed. The running battles between the police liberally using tear gas and rubber bullets and the protestors employing sticks and brickbats resulted in at least three deaths with hundreds of people injured, among them many from the media.
It is not entirely clear why the army already in place under Article 245-A could not do more to avert this tragedy. (It seemed finally to be moved to action a couple of days later when PAT and PTI supporters moved into and ransacked the offices of the PTV). Subsequently, a meeting of the army top brass took place on Sunday evening. The ISPR release that followed was cautiously worded but clearly meant to put pressure on the government. It reiterates the armed forces commitment to democracy but warns against the use of force as well as emphasising the need for a quick resolution. The latter two are the operative points for the government, and good advice, but if PAT and PTI hold their ground, as they appeared intent on doing, a resolution remains difficult.
The government needlessly undermined its position by first asking the COAS General Raheel Sharif to play a role in diffusing the situation and then denying it. The army, declared Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the floor of the National Assembly, had neither sought to mediate nor had the government requested it to do so. But the army chief had already been reported in the media as having agreed to such a role. So, who asked him? The government’s contention that it was the PTI and PAT leaders who took the initiative does not wash. In any case, matters on this score were quickly put to rest by an ISPR release that unequivocally cited the government as having requested the army chief to play a `facilitative role.’ The Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar led the damage limitation exercise by drawing attention to the distinction between mediation and facilitation. Politically, however, the only significant issue was who reached out to the army and for what? However delicately it may have been put, the army chief was in fact being asked to play the role of guarantor (not the Parliament, nor even the judiciary) and not least because nothing else appeared to have been acceptable to the PAT and the PTI.
A joint session of Parliament was called by the prime minister for September 2. This could have been done earlier and indeed the PM should have been spending more time in Parliament for the last many months. The Parliament can give a clear and much-needed message as to the primacy of, and its support for, the democratic system; separately the two Houses have already done so. But, for a way out of the crisis to become feasible politically something else will have to be added to the mix by the government. The prime minster has already declared that he has no intention of either resigning or going on leave while a Supreme Court judicial commission completes its work of probing the charge of rigging of elections. It could be argued that he has less reason to resign than his brother Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister Punjab, who would have helped matters considerably by stepping down after the horrendous Model Town incident where firing by the police at Tahirul Qadri’s residence in Lahore left 14 people dead and over 70 injured. Any further delay in the processing of that case will seriously undermine the efforts to resolve the crisis.
In the wake of Javed Hashmi’s allegations, an ISPR statement has categorically denied any army backing of the dharnas. Given our historical baggage this clarification was needed and timely. There has been a widespread perception that the civil and the military establishment were not on the same page on more than one count: relations with India, the fate of General Pervez Musharraf and a private media house. So, we have the perception of manipulation or, at least, a convergence of interests for which the ISPR clarification was necessary.
Many of us have serious reservations about the quality of governance and the incumbent government will have to do something about this sooner rather than later in terms of meeting the challenges that face us. There is much that needs reform, and urgently. But institutions and processes matter. The quest for civilian supremacy is a systemic imperative. Protest is obviously a legitimate means for pressing demands such as that of electoral reform but changing governments through dharna and gherao, no matter how you cut it, are a bad precedent. It feeds into a narrative of extremism that eventually seeks to dispense with democracy altogether.
The PTI can certainly take credit for putting much-needed electoral reform firmly on the national agenda. And let us not forget in this context that the government has accepted five out of its six demands. An entry into the corridors of power via the national/technocrats government mechanism or some similar enterprise is a bargain for PAT for obvious reasons but PTI is a different matter. Here is the second largest party in the country, going by the number of votes polled in the last elections. The manner in which PTI has engaged the middle class in the political process has been impressive. Its constituency covers a broad spectrum including the young and old, men and women, Shia and Sunni and so on. The PTI is the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a significant political force in Punjab and has been the only party to pose any kind of a real challenge to the MQM in urban Sindh in the last elections. Not least, Imran Khan has backed up his policy emphasis on health and education by building a cancer hospital and a university. His party can be a real asset to the system.
And, yes, we understand that he has been knocking on various doors for a year and a half to get the election results verified but as political struggles go that is hardly the end of the world. He needs to stand with the democratic forces and not, by design or by way of unintended consequence, undermine the democratic system. Surely, he does not need to take this route to power.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 3rd, 2014.
It is not entirely clear why the army already in place under Article 245-A could not do more to avert this tragedy. (It seemed finally to be moved to action a couple of days later when PAT and PTI supporters moved into and ransacked the offices of the PTV). Subsequently, a meeting of the army top brass took place on Sunday evening. The ISPR release that followed was cautiously worded but clearly meant to put pressure on the government. It reiterates the armed forces commitment to democracy but warns against the use of force as well as emphasising the need for a quick resolution. The latter two are the operative points for the government, and good advice, but if PAT and PTI hold their ground, as they appeared intent on doing, a resolution remains difficult.
The government needlessly undermined its position by first asking the COAS General Raheel Sharif to play a role in diffusing the situation and then denying it. The army, declared Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the floor of the National Assembly, had neither sought to mediate nor had the government requested it to do so. But the army chief had already been reported in the media as having agreed to such a role. So, who asked him? The government’s contention that it was the PTI and PAT leaders who took the initiative does not wash. In any case, matters on this score were quickly put to rest by an ISPR release that unequivocally cited the government as having requested the army chief to play a `facilitative role.’ The Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar led the damage limitation exercise by drawing attention to the distinction between mediation and facilitation. Politically, however, the only significant issue was who reached out to the army and for what? However delicately it may have been put, the army chief was in fact being asked to play the role of guarantor (not the Parliament, nor even the judiciary) and not least because nothing else appeared to have been acceptable to the PAT and the PTI.
A joint session of Parliament was called by the prime minister for September 2. This could have been done earlier and indeed the PM should have been spending more time in Parliament for the last many months. The Parliament can give a clear and much-needed message as to the primacy of, and its support for, the democratic system; separately the two Houses have already done so. But, for a way out of the crisis to become feasible politically something else will have to be added to the mix by the government. The prime minster has already declared that he has no intention of either resigning or going on leave while a Supreme Court judicial commission completes its work of probing the charge of rigging of elections. It could be argued that he has less reason to resign than his brother Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister Punjab, who would have helped matters considerably by stepping down after the horrendous Model Town incident where firing by the police at Tahirul Qadri’s residence in Lahore left 14 people dead and over 70 injured. Any further delay in the processing of that case will seriously undermine the efforts to resolve the crisis.
In the wake of Javed Hashmi’s allegations, an ISPR statement has categorically denied any army backing of the dharnas. Given our historical baggage this clarification was needed and timely. There has been a widespread perception that the civil and the military establishment were not on the same page on more than one count: relations with India, the fate of General Pervez Musharraf and a private media house. So, we have the perception of manipulation or, at least, a convergence of interests for which the ISPR clarification was necessary.
Many of us have serious reservations about the quality of governance and the incumbent government will have to do something about this sooner rather than later in terms of meeting the challenges that face us. There is much that needs reform, and urgently. But institutions and processes matter. The quest for civilian supremacy is a systemic imperative. Protest is obviously a legitimate means for pressing demands such as that of electoral reform but changing governments through dharna and gherao, no matter how you cut it, are a bad precedent. It feeds into a narrative of extremism that eventually seeks to dispense with democracy altogether.
The PTI can certainly take credit for putting much-needed electoral reform firmly on the national agenda. And let us not forget in this context that the government has accepted five out of its six demands. An entry into the corridors of power via the national/technocrats government mechanism or some similar enterprise is a bargain for PAT for obvious reasons but PTI is a different matter. Here is the second largest party in the country, going by the number of votes polled in the last elections. The manner in which PTI has engaged the middle class in the political process has been impressive. Its constituency covers a broad spectrum including the young and old, men and women, Shia and Sunni and so on. The PTI is the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, a significant political force in Punjab and has been the only party to pose any kind of a real challenge to the MQM in urban Sindh in the last elections. Not least, Imran Khan has backed up his policy emphasis on health and education by building a cancer hospital and a university. His party can be a real asset to the system.
And, yes, we understand that he has been knocking on various doors for a year and a half to get the election results verified but as political struggles go that is hardly the end of the world. He needs to stand with the democratic forces and not, by design or by way of unintended consequence, undermine the democratic system. Surely, he does not need to take this route to power.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 3rd, 2014.