Gradually unsticking

Wherever individual or political sympathies may lie, there is an underlying reality to the last four months of protest in Islamabad and across the country. Pakistan and its fragile economy have been damaged — by how much is open to contentious dispute but damage there has been. The sitting government has dithered and prevaricated, the protesters have run the gamut of impossible demands and ever-shifting goalposts, and few political careers are going to have been enhanced. To what extent the status quo has been shaken is open to dispute, but the dreadful insertion of the massacre at the Army Public School into the equation has forced a breach in the political logjam that was taking nobody anywhere.

At issue has been the allegation of rigging in the 2013 general election. There is no doubt that rigging took place, but whether it was on a scale sufficient to alter the outcome is yet another contentious issue that seemed insoluble — but that may change. The chairman of the PTI Imran Khan has indicated his approval to a recommendation made by his party’s core committee. The PTI should accept the government offer of a judicial commission to look into the 2013 elections — a considerable shift from the ‘stuckist’ position of the last four months. This may herald a return to some kind of normality in parliamentary terms. The PTI has been absent, and its return is to be linked to the outcome of the judicial commission. Presumably if this is not to the liking of the PTI, then the nation is back to square one, but for the moment there is an easing of tensions. An agreed draft is awaited that only lacks some “suitable words” for the situation to ease further. A presidential ordinance will be issued for the establishment of the commission. We can but hope that this begins to draw a line under a summer of turbulent political activity that produced considerably more heat than light. But getting unstuck will take more than ‘suitable words’.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2014.

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