WEEKS into a crisis and after many rounds of negotiations between the government and the PTI, the intransigence of both sides is striking.

The PTI chief Imran Khan has publicly once again declared that his party will not leave Constitution Avenue until Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns — a claim that could be true, but may also have something to do with keeping the pressure on the PML-N negotiators.

Meanwhile, Mr Khan’s negotiating team has told the government that it wants a judicial super-commission, backed by a presidential ordinance and having extraordinary powers, to announce binding judgements in the case of even individual constituencies where the May 2013 elections are disputed by the PTI.

The difference between the super-commission demanded by the PTI and the judicial commission offered by the PML-N is not trivial: the PTI’s proposal would bypass existing rules, including constitutional ones, in a way that would turn the electoral and criminal systems on their head. Surely, while the overall goal of the PTI may be to prove the electoral fraud it has alleged and to reform the electoral system, putting the horse before the cart is not in the greater interest of the democratic system.

Yet, for every bit of foolishness and intransigence the PTI can demonstrate, the PML-N seems willing to outdo its political foe. Quite remarkably, at this late stage, the PML-N negotiating team has once again closed the door to recounts in selected constituencies. That was the original demand of the PTI, a demand the PML-N dithered on until the PTI demands increased, before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself publicly suggested that re-examining the results in selected constituencies could be done.

Quite why the PML-N would backtrack now on a pledge made in public by the prime minister is difficult to fathom — unless the PML-N is reverting to type and once again misreading the situation. Following PTI president Javed Hashmi’s bombshell allegations and the robust defence of the democratic system in the joint session of parliament, the PML-N had regained some of the space it had lost during last weekend’s violence on Constitution Avenue. Feeling a little more confident, perhaps the PML-N decided now is not the time to make any concessions to the protesters.

That would be a mistake. The joint session of parliament has made it clear that while the opposition fully supports the democratic system, many a party in the opposition has reservations about last year’s results too. To close the door on vote recounts as the PML-N negotiators have done is to not only rile up the PTI, but to potentially provoke the ire of the opposition. While the PML-N has democratic allies, it does not have carte blanche. Misreading the mood of parliament could end up giving the protesters outside parliament another lease of life.

Published in Dawn, September 7th, 2014