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While the TV cameras are inevitably focusing 24x7 on the Islamabad protests, the electronic media is allowing very little time and space to add background to the unfolding saga.
After having won the national elections decisively over a year ago and comfortably forming governments at the centre and Punjab on its own with a stable majority, the next major hurdle for the PML-N was the appointment of the new army chief. So what went wrong?
Well, if there was hope that a handpicked army chief would follow the policies of the government it was soon clear that this wasn’t always to be. From relations with India, including the Most Favoured Nation status issue, to taking the lead on Afghanistan, Sharif seemed to concede ground.
Therefore, civil-military relations were said to be harmonious. Then came two irritants. Clearly, the first was the matter of the Article 6 trial of the former army chief and the country’s military ruler retired Gen Musharraf.
By all accounts, key members of the Sharif inner circle assured the army that Musharraf would be allowed to leave and live in exile once he’d been indicted by the special court set up to try him. But then heated internal differences in PML-N meant the former general wasn’t permitted to go abroad.
If political parties were talking to each other as they would in any democracy we would have had a lot of answers by now
Soon indications started to emerge that the army leadership was upset with the government. At no time, however, did this unhappiness reach proportions that a change in Islamabad appeared on the horizon. Differences over Operation Zarb-i-Azb also weren’t that critical.
However, the attempted assassination of Geo TV’s Hamid Mir, the anchor’s allegation that the ISI chief was to blame for the attack aimed at silencing him and the subsequent coverage on the TV channel created a very dangerous situation.
The army wanted to shut down the channel. The government decided to stand by it. From then on, it seemed, the relations between the two nosedived. Some sort of a countdown had been initiated. If an archive of Shaikh Rashid interviews exists you won’t need to be a genius to reach that conclusion.
Multiple sources suggest meetings, many in Lahore, between senior representatives of those parties which are involved in the capital protests and those scripting the story that we are witnessing as the unfolding scenario.
The choreographed coming together of the two marches as the ‘red zone’ was breached, the IGP’s reluctance to act and the removal from the scene of Islamabad’s top police officer suggest a behind-the-scenes player of considerable power. The IGP issue must ring a huge alarm bell for the Sharifs.
The Sharifs’ grip over the Punjab administration is absolutely vital for them to be seen as in charge by their rank and file, even PML-N elected representatives, and we all know what happens when that’s not the case: the ranks of entities such as the PML-Q swell with N desertions.
It isn’t difficult to imagine what would have happened if, as the marchers and more so their supposed backers, were hoping, a million or even half a million supporters had gathered in Islamabad to demand ‘change’. But the numbers were way short of that.
In a report earlier this week, Reuters’ well-informed reporter Mehreen Zahra-Malik, quoting unnamed military sources, reported that the prime minister had been assured by the military his government will survive but will have to ‘share space with the army’.
But how will this ‘space sharing’ work? What are the specifics? If it is open to interpretation by the various players with their own different agendas, will it create more irritants than pave the way for smooth interaction between the power players?
Of course, there is the question where does such an arrangement sit in terms of the Constitution and the law and what happens now to the only demand which was backed by a consensus in the country — electoral reform?
If political parties were talking to each other as they would in any democracy we would have had a lot of answers by now. However, if some in the fray are aiming for the stars and not willing to negotiate anything less than that, worse may follow.
And what if this is so because they are dancing to someone else’s tune? As these lines are being written, the TV is showing the sectarian Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) demonstrating in the capital too. The party is fiercely opposed to Dr Qadri, his party and some of their allies and could draw blood in the name of ideology.
Its leaders are known to enjoy close ties with the PML-N in Punjab as there is evidence of it being used by the security establishment for its policy goals as well. Whether the ASWJ is in Islamabad at the behest of someone or the other, the move reeks of insanity.
Yes, whether its ‘insertion’ is aimed at creating, catalysing an explosive situation, an urgency, which the low numbers at the marches couldn’t achieve or it demonstrates the desire of the governing party to show muscle to the demonstrators, it is hare-brained.
Any confrontation could set off a chain reaction impossible to cap. Many entities in Pakistan, admittedly one more than most others, have used religiously-driven militant hordes as a means of achieving their policy objectives.
One would have thought the past eight to 10 years would have shown the utter failure of such a policy as these hordes in the end came to haunt and torment Dr Frankenstein, their creator. What’s the guarantee the outcome will be different this time round?
The end may not be that dramatic, explosive. Let me tell you why. Imran Khan threatens to live in his container for a year till his demands are met. The TV channels will continue to show him saying the same things over and over 24X7. For me that would be slow death; one by a thousand cuts.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2014
