The PTI has managed to create an extraordinary crisis. Before leading the Azadi marchers for a sit-in at the Parliament House on Tuesday, Imran Khan threatened to take over the PM's House if Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif does not step down - an impermissible step fraught with dangerous consequences. If things came to such a pass the onus, to a large extent, would fall on the government's shoulder for its failure to address, in a timely fashion, the PTI's complaints about alleged electoral fraud. The ruling party obviously did not pay attention to his persistent threats to take to the streets if he did not get justice. He has now mounted an unprecedented protest to dislodge the government.
Imran has not started his protest campaign all of a sudden, as some of his detractors have wrongly been saying. It is a matter of record that the PTI has been crying foul ever since the elections were held more than 14 months ago and demanding audit in four constituencies. The party pursued the issue in all the relevant forums - the election tribunals, the Supreme Court, and Parliament only to discover that the system of patronages underpinning the power structure favoured only the entrenched parties and their candidates.
While Parliament failed to respond to the party's calls for electoral reform, former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry refused to entertain PTI's petitions, saying he had thousands of other cases to adjudicate. Yet the CJ, Imran keeps bringing up ad nauseam, had all the time to take suo motu notice of a minor offence of carrying a bottle of wine aboard the national carrier by a member of General Musharraf's political party. We also know that under the law the election tribunals are required to decide electoral deputes within 120 days. After more than fourteen months some of the most hotly disputed results remain to be decided because the system favours the powerful. For instance, Imran challenged the result of Lahore NA-122 constituency, where he was decaled unsuccessful against PML-N candidate Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, presently Speaker of the National Assembly. Strangely enough, the winner has been seeking and receiving stay orders against the election tribunal proceedings, one after the other, from the Lahore High Court on blatantly flimsy grounds. If Imran refuses to accept what he sees as systemic injustice, he is not to blame.
It goes without saying that the crisis needs to be resolved within the confines of the Constitution while maintaining the dignity of the State institution. But chances of that happening are slim. As per the Constitution the PM can be removed only through a parliamentary vote of no-confidence or he can decide of his own accord to dissolve the National Assembly and call new elections. The government announced late Tuesday evening that neither the PM will step down nor will he call early elections. Understandably, the ruling party can ill-afford to make radical comprises at this point in time and be seen to have weakened.
Imran is challenging the very legitimacy of the government on the basis of alleged electoral fraud. He claims to be seeking a solution within the constitutional parameters. The Constitution, as noted earlier, provides for only two ways for the achievement of his objective: the PM's voluntary decision to dissolve the National Assembly or a vote of no-confidence. Imran has been trying to approach the issue from another angle, that of intent of the law. His line of argument goes something like this: The last elections were massively rigged- all major political parties agree on this. Under Article 218 (3) of the Constitution, the Election Commission of Pakistan is duty bound to organise elections in a way that ensures "the election is conducted honestly, justly and fairly." Since unfair and unjust means were widely used in the election, the NA and the government resulting from it lack legitimacy. This 'following-the-spirit-of-the-Constitution' argument does not hold water in the face of clear guidelines about the prime minister's stepping down. True, the existing electoral system has serious shortcomings. But a functioning democracy is a self-correcting system. The present dispensation has allowed the PTI to register its complaints loud and clear, leading to the formation of a parliamentary electoral reform committee which is already working on addressing the inadequacies in the relevant laws and mechanisms.
For now, one can only lament the fact that the political class has once again messed up things. The government misread the situation when it waited until Monday - apparently to gauge Imran Khan's ability to gather numbers - to name its team to engage him for resolving the crisis. In the event, as if to cock a snook at the PTI Chairman, the two-member team included Railways Minister Khwaja Saad Rafique, one of the ruling party members PTI accuses of having won through fraudulent means. Imran in the meanwhile has pushed things to the brink threatening to storm the PM's House if Nawaz Sharif does not resign. He is unlikely to beat a retreat.
Sadly, an amicable settlement is not in sight. Sadder still, the situation has invited army intervention. Army chief General Raheel Sharif held a nearly four-hour long meeting with the PM on Tuesday. The subject of discussion could not have been the weather. In fact, the same day ISPR spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa offered a clue as to the content of the discussion, saying that the situation required "patience, wisdom and sagacity" from all stakeholders to resolve the prevailing impasse through a meaningful dialogue in the larger national and public interest. We can expect to see replay of the 1993 General Waheed Kakar's solution. Such a solution offers some comfort in that the system all political parties have been saying they wanted to save would be saved. Nonetheless, if and when that happens it should be a matter of abiding shame for our political elites that the credit for it would not be theirs to claim but those from whom it was to be saved.
saida_fazal@yahoo.com