A long march is tiring. A seemingly confused, dithering pursuit of the marchers should be even more energy-sapping for the pursuers as it is irritating for the onlookers. And if the chaser happens to be a government it may have more than an aching body to show for its troubles, like the apparent bruises and desperation that capped the PML-N’s latest tag-along journey on the Lahore-Islamabad route this past week.

Is it as simple as that or was there some method to the constant retreat by the PML-N government in the face of the marchers? And how much of this retreat was natural, as caused by the marchers’ push, and how much of it was manufactured to create the needed placating impression that the government was offering concessions to their challengers?

That there was going to be a march was a foregone conclusion from the outset. People subscribing to various views found their own justification for this inevitability, the most fashionable and most believable of the theories still being the one that envisaged powerful handlers pulling the strings of those determined to take their case to Islamabad.

Also, the government had to contend with a precedent even though it hardly fitted its own size and its own circumstances. Less than two years ago, the PPP government had dealt amicably with a long march by Dr Tahirul Qadri, who now led one of the two marches on the capital. Thus after giving competition to the PML-N as its original adversary, the PPP was back to haunt the PML-N — surprise, surprise — with a ‘good example’ from the past.

After giving competition to the PML-N as its original adversary, the PPP was back to haunt the PML-N — with a ‘good example’ from the past

The comparison was flawed. The PPP’s response then was shaped by a realisation of its own strength — weakness actually — rather than anything else. Berated as the worst government in decades, the PPP hardly had the power at its disposal to react in any other manner than it did: waiting for the Qadri marchers to cool down in freezing nights before the likes of Qamar Zaman Kaira were sent over with a resolution.

There wasn’t much Dr Qadri could have aimed to extract out of an Asif Zardari set-up that was walking lamely on its last legs. The government was counting its days before an election was to be held and was in no position to offer more than the promise of some electoral reforms and end it all amid smiles meant to convey its own sense of victory over the protesters. The end then did manage to create the impression — illusion? — which added to Zardari’s reputation of being a master of reconciliation, which could itself have been a trait based in a lack of choices.

The latest Nawaz Sharif government could not be compared to that shaky set-up barely held together ‘by the genius of Asif Zardari’. This was a heavy-mandated government which could be likened to only one government of the past, Nawaz’s own that came about after the 1997 sweep of Punjab by the PML-N. His strength was his weakness as it exposed Nawaz to greater demands by the protesting marchers, his predicament complicated by the fact that the challenge came so early into his tenure, and by the standard theory about the military establishment and the halters it wanted to place around his neck.

The handlers’ part was something the PML-N had little control over. That had to be pondered over and decided when the hidden agenda was, beyond the dropping of hints and indications, revealed in full. In the given situation, perhaps, it was not too bad that it had refrained from giving out any concessions to those who were visible — the marchers — and had a few offers up its sleeve by the time the procession entered the red zone in Islamabad.

If it came to striking a hard bargain the government had a few choices. Running Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was still enough of a charm for the PTI to be in two minds about discarding the system. In the case of Dr Qadri, the government through its delaying tactics could make a huge concession by agreeing to register an FIR of the June 17 killing of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek workers in Lahore.

The Shahbaz Sharif set-up in Punjab had seemed so very confused in dealing with this ‘routine’ legal matter, and it had been squarely blamed for its inefficiency, but was it pure luck and accident that it had this matter of the FIR in its hand as it sat down to negotiating a compromise? An FIR with the names of the prime minister and the chief minister was a little risky but this was what gave it its value. It was by no means a small offering, the rulers presenting themselves for a murder investigation. The country had not seen a bigger sacrifice for democracy than this.

The organisers of the ‘azadi’ and ‘inqilab’ march may not have found public support on the scale they had been looking for. The government may have always appeared to be behind them. But perhaps the apparent ‘confusion’ with which the powerful governments in Punjab and Islamabad tackled the challenge was not bereft of method. Perhaps it was not as crazy as those wont to comparing the powerful Sharif set-up with the compromised Zardari government thought it was. The Sharifs did what they could as opposed to Zardari who did not do what he could not.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014