Dream merchants

A grueling month on, the sit-inners are as far from accomplishing their mission of securing resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as they were when they marched into the Capital on August 14 to launch a 'Naya Pakistan' and the dream merchants' utopian state. Not only has he refused to resign from his office, he has also removed from the negotiating table the trade-off he was once prepared to make in return for dispersal of sit-ins. Rightly then with no work in hand the go-betweens are left cooling their heels, making the standoff more robust. Both Imran and Qadri had arrived in Islamabad riding the high wave of self-acclaimed popularity of their mission to remove the government - and had unwittingly sworn never to return empty-handed. So what to do now that Nawaz Sharif has not resigned; and he's not even in a mood to talk. Qadri has announced his supporters will go on a hunger strike while Imran has launched a 'rebellion campaign' against the system. His hard take on the higher judiciary an evening before is a strong case in point. The PAT's Qadri, who is quite good at coining the protest jargon, had also ordered his workers to scribble 'Go Nawaz Go' slogan on the currency bills - only to be promptly checked by the central bank that this would be illegal, in response to which Qadri promptly withdrew his edict. How the 'rebellion' will play out, only the time will tell. But what is visible in plain sight is that from now on, the government is going to take on the sit-ins head-on, a sampling of which was provided by the police to puncture the PTI's 'One Nation Day' celebrations. Now Imran has given a call for "Go Nawaz Go" day to be celebrated tomorrow and has asked the people to tear their unpaid utility bills with fanfare at the dharna. With about a dozen FIRs in hand the police are now out to hound and hunt the sit-inners, a move likely to aggravate tensions. Given the danger of the sit-ins exploding into a wider clash spreading to adjacent residential areas it is quite a frightening proposition. It is therefore necessary that their contention doesn't come to a head and flow into rest of Islamabad. It's indeed a dicey situation warranting a subtle handling by both sides.
Courtesy the benefit of hindsight a month on it appears that the government and its detractors now occupying the D-Chowk in front of the parliament building have tellingly erred on the side of being copiously misinformed. The Nawaz Sharif government perceived both Imran and Qadri as the cat's paw of the General Headquarters, and as it felt threatened it sought close company of the political opposition that happened to be equally misinformed. And so was this long-drawn joint session of parliament, and extensive innuendoes in media of a 'script' being acted out. As against this, Imran Khan was also taken for a ride by some of his fellow-travellers who pumped up his ego by seeing in him 'cometh the hour cometh the man', and thus dispatched him to the 'Go Nawaz Go' cul-de-sac. In actuality both sides are fighting demons of their own creation. As expected Javed Hashmi is once again in the news, now claiming he would not say 'the current political impasse is part of the script; however, some retired generals are in haste'. This is a little toned down from the previous. He should know that never ever anywhere in the world do the retired generals impose a martial law; that they may do it in Pakistan he couldn't be more intriguing. In Pakistan's 67 years of turbulent life we have had a number of political upheavals including martial laws, but none so much pointless and out of tune as the one being warned of today. Leave Qadri aside; it is simply unarguable. That Imran Khan essentially a political animal and a committed proponent of a democratic Pakistan is not a plausible argument because he is hurting his own cause be resorting to pressure tactics to gain political power. And if his core committee has failed to pull him back from the brink he has arrived at, it seems to be a case of cronyism infecting the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. The muscle power increasingly put on display by both sides is too dangerous to be allowed to persist. Should this come to a head Pakistan of today won't be able to withstand its fallout. Ubiquitous presence of enemy on borders and inside, foreign-funded insurgencies and sectarian strife, tarnished image abroad, failing national economy, series of natural calamities - what is not there to weaken Pakistan that we should have more of it. Hopefully both sides of the divide would show political maturity; more of it is expected of the dwellers of the shipping containers.