ONE preached revolution, the other freedom. But their basic cause was common: the overthrow of the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N government.

Now Imran Khan has lost a critical partner, Tahirul Qadri, in sustaining the protests on Constitution Avenue and it is difficult to see how Mr Khan and the PTI will be able to keep more than a flicker of interest alive nationally in the anti-government sit-in in Islamabad.

While Mr Khan’s nightly oratory in Islamabad — when he is not travelling the country attending rallies, that is — has often been the focal point over the last two months, it was really Mr Qadri’s supporters who held down the fort as it were and gave the site the feel of a genuine sit-in.

Mr Khan is now alone on Constitution Avenue, and more and more it appears that the PTI chief has miscalculated. Perhaps the real downturn for Mr Khan began when he made the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a sine qua non — an essential condition — of ending the PTI protest. Clearly, barring intervention by the army leadership or street violence, Mr Khan had no real way of forcing a prime ministerial resignation.

Had the focus remained on electoral reforms and scrutiny of the May 2013 results in certain constituencies, Mr Khan could well have achieved his goals. But by aiming too high, Mr Khan seems to have left himself with no tangible gains at all.

Yet, the spectre of failure by Mr Khan to secure even the just and legitimate demands of the PTI should not absolve the PML-N in any way of its own failure to do the right now. With the Qadri threat apparently gone — whether or not blood money is paid to the victims of the Model Town incident is politically hardly of the order of magnitude as compared to the chief ministership of Shahbaz Sharif still hanging in the balance — the PML-N seems fairly confident of two things.

It believes it has more than enough support inside parliament to ignore Mr Khan and that the PTI chief does not have a tidal wave of support outside parliament, among the public, to be able to force the government to pay attention. That though would be a travesty of democracy. Unwise and provocative as Mr Khan’s methods may have been, electoral reforms are needed and they should be a priority. Unhappily, the PML-N seems unwilling or unable to grasp that idea.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014