The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government is increasingly hemmed in by problems and issues, all crises largely of its own making. The ‘ban’ on the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has been revoked just six months after it was imposed by a federal cabinet decision that reports say elicited strong dissent from some ministers. Such disquiet over the end outcome of the government’s bluster, climb down and final surrender are understandable since such agreements in the past have not produced the desired results because such militant outfits soon go back to their violent confrontationist ways. This time, the TLP claimed at least seven police scalps in an unprecedentedly violent series of mass protests. It is said the establishment is behind the agreement whose details have been kept secret, with critical observers wondering whether this reversal of its proscription and mainstreaming of TLP means the establishment has some political purpose in its bag of tricks to use this militant outfit to control the national narrative, confine it within religious parameters, and use the TLP against the mainstream opposition. As in the past, there are few who do not believe that the government will soon rue its abject surrender.
If there are innocent souls who believe the government’s rhetoric that the agreement with the TLP was necessary under the circumstances, in the greater national interest and for the sake of peace, let them chew on the news that the same government is in talks with the even more ferocious Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for an agreement to halt its attacks from across the Afghan border and its actions by its cells within Pakistan. Reportedly, it is the Afghan Taliban who have brokered these talks. The terms so far available are that the TTP is dangling a one-month ceasefire before the government in exchange for the release of its incarcerated cadres. Severe objections to such a course have come from the parents of the slain schoolchildren in the Army Public School, Peshawar massacre by the TTP, as well as the families of other victims of the TTP’s bloody terrorist campaign. Even if this agreement comes through, what is the guarantee the TTP will not revert to its customary terrorist violence once its workers are set free? This has been the trajectory of every agreement with the TTP since 2004.
These are not the only issues portending an even more difficult time for this government. The opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is gearing up for another series of protests leading up to a long march on Islamabad despite the falling out with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and divisions within the main PDM component, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The PPP and PDM seem inclined to consider a rapprochement while the internal rift of the PML-N remains, but under wraps.
Meanwhile, its opponents have much material to lambast the PTI government with. The Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP’s) report on the Daska by-election reads like an indictment of the government for trying to rig the election. Considering the manipulation by the establishment of the 2018 general elections that brought the PTI to power, it is worth considering whether the ubiquitous establishment adopted a ‘hands off’ policy vis-à-vis the Daska by-polls. The establishment may not be happy with the PTI government’s, and particularly Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s attempt to challenge the appointment of the new Director General Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Although the PM finally succumbed to the establishment’s wishes in this respect, the military brass may feel offended at his ‘courage’. The ECP report seems to have put paid to the credibility of the PTI government’s tall talk about electoral reforms and using electronic voting machines, issues on which the opposition and the ECP both had reservations.
Then there is the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Ordinance. This has effectively reduced the Chairman NAB to an office in which the incumbent serves at the executive’s pleasure, i.e., the PM can remove him and the President is bound to obey the PM’s advice. Previously, the power of removal of the NAB Chairman lay with the Supreme Judicial Council. The Supreme Court Bar Association and other lawyers’ bodies have already declared they will challenge the Ordinance in the Supreme Court. One wonders whether the PTI government in its wisdom has taken this step to pre-empt the possibility that the by now controversial NAB anti-corruption campaign aimed so far at the opposition may turn against it or at least some sitting ministers. Were this to happen, it could be another signal of the establishment’s unhappiness with the incumbent government.
The economic management of the PTI government is another case in point of self-inflicted wounds. The price of sugar has increased 200 percent in the last three years of the PTI government and the commodity still faces consumers with availability issues. The Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) repeated fiascos also point to the sheer incompetence of PM Imran Khan and his team.
Had the establishment not foolishly thrown all its eggs in Imran Khan’s basket, they would have been spared their current blushes. Having relegated the opposition to the margins through an anti-corruption crusade that despite the tall claims of recoveries by NAB turns out to be peanuts, the establishment’s embarrassment at the arguably most incompetent government in Pakistan’s history would be turning many a face red. Currently, the establishment is stuck on the horns of a dilemma. If they stick with Imran Khan and company, they risk having the blemishes of this government tarnishing their reputation too. If they abandon him, now or after two years, they could also come in for some stick at the bar of public opinion. This now is a classic case of damned if you, damned if you don’t.
What our establishment needs to learn, and there is more than enough experience in our past for this purpose, is that every manipulation of the political scene engenders a bigger crisis tomorrow. The establishment may be able to ride such crises out, but the damage to the country returning to square one again and again is simply incalculable. Pakistan desperately needs, at least as a minimum, a credible, democratic system. This actually poses little or no threat to the dominance of the establishment. It does, however, promise the evolution of a consensual system that lays down the rules of the political game through reliance on the will of the people, not elevated non-elected individuals or institutions.
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Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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