IMRAN Khan and the PTI have a democratic right to protest, and the party’s focus on the as yet unresolved Panama Papers issue is an important source of political pressure on the PML-N government.

The latter appears disinclined to allow an investigation of the first family and does not seem to take the public’s concerns about corruption seriously.

Therefore, before addressing some of the more dangerous and overheated rhetoric of the PTI, it is necessary to focus on the core of the PTI’s protest: the absence of any investigation by any commission or statutory body into what were certainly very troubling revelations in the Panama Papers.

Moreover, the PML-N government seems intent on shielding the first family from any inquiry that prioritises an investigation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s and his family’s wealth and assets.

More than six months since the Panama Papers first became international news, the government’s stance remains egregious and indefensible.

With or without the PTI protests, the PML-N has a duty to the public to demonstrate that the first family is not tainted by corruption.

Wrongheaded as the PML-N’s position may be, it still has time to change course. With the Supreme Court scheduled to take up several petitions calling for judicial action on the Panama Papers issue tomorrow, the pressure is once again building. Rare is the political issue that remains at the centre of the national discourse for so long.

But in the case of the Panama Papers, a growing public unease about rampant corruption in the public sector and among the people’s representatives appears to be behind the sustained interest in the matter.

The PML-N would be mistaken to believe that were it not for the PTI’s relentlessness, the Panama Papers issue would simply disappear. Perhaps the government should note how the opposition remains united on the demand that the first family be investigated independently and transparently.

Where this is some concern about the PTI, it is with the tactics it is threatening and the incendiary rhetoric it deploys. The threat of a so-called lockdown of Islamabad on Nov 2 could lead to violence and clashes with law enforcement — an outcome that would be anti-democratic and that could trigger a grave crisis of democracy itself.

Mr Khan’s freewheeling speeches and political rhetoric is often explained away by the PTI as a matter of style rather than substance. But Mr Khan does drift all too often uncomfortably close to a line that should not be crossed — that of the distinction between forcing better outcomes from within the democratic system and a heedless plunge into democracy-destabilising approaches.

If the government’s approach has been unacceptably stubborn, the opposition should remain mindful that no-holds-barred protesting can have catastrophic effects on the democratic system. The Supreme Court may yet step in and offer a sensible way out. All sides should remain amenable to refining their strategies accordingly.

Published in Dawn October 19th, 2016