LAHORE: With the Sharifs and the PML-N going through some legal and political challenges, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) chief Tahirul Qadri has decided to cut his foreign tour short and head home next Tuesday (Aug 8).

He had left the country on July 1 on a two-month tour of Egypt, the UK and Norway. But on Monday, he decided to return to the country in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict that disqualified the prime minter and provided Qadri a chance to “push for justice for victims of Model Town and making report of (Justice Baqir Ali) Najfi Commission public”.

“Though the party has announced participation in the next elections but its focus right now is Model Town tragedy and justice for the victims, not any electoral alliance, which would come later,” says the party spokesman.

However, the party insiders say Tahirul Qadri and the PAT think it is most opportune time to hit legally beleaguered Sharifs, create more problems for them and press for his agenda because now Sharifs, in his perception, cannot control the state institutions like before.

Qadri’s return would be his third attempt in the last four years to force his political preferences through a movement. He had taken his followers to Islamabad in 2013 and then 2014 to have his way through the political system, bypassing the electoral route.

In first instance, he led his followers to federal capital in January 2013 for, what he called, electoral reforms for the following elections. The one-week protest at D-Chowk ended with an agreement with the then PPP government for electoral reforms, which the PPP agreed to legislate before next (2013) elections. Politicians like former Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed stood guarantors to the agreement but nothing came out of it. One of the major steps agreed in the compromise was “strict and elaborate implementation” of articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution and time for judging candidates on both provisions was to be extended from two to 30 days. Things, however, fizzled out as Qadri called off the protest, which had crippled life in the federal capital for a week.

The next attempt made by him came in August 2014, when he joined Imran Khan in his famous sit-in (dharana), following killing of 23 PAT workers on June 17, 2014. The 70-day picketing of federal capital ended when the then army chief Gen Raheel Sharif helped him lodge an FIR for killing of PAT workers and, according to Tahirul Qadri’s claim, promised to see “justice delivered to the party”.

The party insiders, however, claimed that massive investment on keeping thousands of workers at the protest point became too heavy to sustain and the party was left with no option but to call it off at the first available opportunity. The lodging of FIR just provided that exit point to Qadri who left Imran Khan to carry on with his ‘dharna’.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2017