The PTI and PML-N may have become veterans of squaring off against each other and both sides often seem impervious to advice or good sense, but the stakes are, once again, high enough to merit counselling caution and cooperation in Islamabad today.

In this now long-running saga, both sides sometimes appear to forget that politics aside, there is first and foremost a responsibility towards the citizens to ensure their safety and security.

The PTI has a democratic right to protest and has exercised that right to the hilt, occasionally flirting with the boundaries of what lawful protest entails, but it also has a responsibility towards the thousands it brings out onto the streets in support of its anti-government agenda.

Similarly, the PML-N, as the governing party and chief custodian of the democratic project as a result, has a duty to uphold the law and the Constitution and to protect state institutions.

But every single one of the protesters the government will be confronted by is an individual towards whom the state has a fundamental responsibility: to ensure their safety and ensure that any action taken in the name of security is proportionate, necessary and handled professionally.

Much though will depend on the kind of leadership the two sides demonstrate in Islamabad today. On the PTI’s side, Imran Khan has it within his power to whip up dangerous passions or to promote strong but peaceful protest.

Over the course of the three months that the PTI leadership has been protesting near parliament every day, the PTI supporters have by and large been peaceful, and where they have not been peaceful, as infamously occurred on Aug 30 and Sept 1, they were roused into violence by the party leadership itself or the latter had been able to quickly quell small-scale violence by rowdy supporters.

Similarly, two individuals on the PML-N side will be very much under the microscope today: Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan, who is in charge of security in the capital, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose word carries great weight and whose prompt intervention can help events from spiralling out of control, if it were to come to that.

The leaderships of both PTI supporters and the civilian-led law enforcement personnel in the capital today will all need to play their part.

And once Nov 30 passes off, peacefully for the PTI and with restraint by the government, what next?

If that is indeed the case — and surely after months of this political impasse, a single protest can be seen off peacefully by both sides — then the focus needs to switch to defusing the slow-burning crisis by addressing the PTI’s legitimate demands on electoral matters and securing a pledge by the PTI that it will end this destabilising phase in the country’s politics and oppose the government inside parliament, not on the streets.

Published in Dawn, November 30th , 2014