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| Pakistan's Dharna Dramas | | | Samuel Baid | 11/19/2016 12:06:52 AM |
| After weeks of huffing and puffing, Chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan meekly cancelled what he claimed one-million strong dharna to bring life in the national capital, Islamabad, to a standstill for an indefinite period. Just about 20 hours before the dharna was to start, Imran Khan converted it into a Thanksgiving Day dismaying his associates and especially those who had converged on Islamabad for the dharna braving harsh obstructions and police action. The PTI supporters were right when they asked thanksgiving for whom and for what. One cadre said it was not a day for thanksgiving but a day of humiliation. Why the dharna was so suddenly called off on its eve has raised many speculations. There are those who argue that the dharna had become absolutely meaningless after the Pakistan Supreme Court on 1st November ordered the formation of a judicial commission to probe the Panama Papers scandal which revealed that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's children were running off-shore companies. Imran Khan and other opposition parties allege that Sharif has been doing money laundering in the names of his children. They want to Prime Minister to step down. But Sharif and his party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)'s stand is that the Panama Papers do not name him when they came to light in April this year. The Pak Supreme Court had received petitions, including one from the PTI seeking its verdict in Panama Papers disclosures. On October 20th the Supreme Court gave Sharif 15 days to submit his reply to the charges contained in the petition. But the PTI said it would go ahead with its dharna programme despite the highest court's notice to Sharif. In his reply Nawaz Sharif's counsel Salman Ahmed Butt submitted his client's response. Sharif said he was a regular taxpayer and he had disclosed assets in his statement before the Pak Election Commission for the 2013 elections. He also said that none of the children named in Panama Papers was dependent on him. The papers had mentioned the names of his sons Hussain and Hasan, his daughter Maryam and son-in-law Mohammad Safdar among those who had off-shore companies. Nawaz Sharif's name was not there. But the opposition insists that the children invested Sharif's money in off-shore companies and thus he was guilty of many laundering and, therefore, liable to disqualification as a member of parliament. Because of this difference the government and the opposition could not produce agreed terms of reference (ToR) for the Commission which was to probe Panama Papers related allegations. On 1st November, the Supreme Court asked the petitioners to either agree on ToR or the court would do so.
Editorial comments in Pakistan: newspapers saw no justification for preparing for what Imran Khan called lockdown of Islamabad after he had petitioned to the Supreme Court. But as a senior journalist of Pakistan, Rashid Rehman said Imran Khan was becoming restless to become the Prime Minister as the time was flying. Perhaps, Imran Khan was not sure that the would-be verdict of the Supreme Court would answer to his ambition. His hopes from dharna drama could have also faded when he realised that in response to his call for a million squatters, only couple of thousands had arrived in Islamabad. With these many he could not have locked down Islamabad. Thus, he first cancelled the warm up dharna on 29th October and then the main dharna on 1st November.
Imran Khan's dharna programme and the boast accompanying it came amid a stand-off between Nawaz Sharif's government and the Army and the campaign to either give extension to Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif or make him a Field Marshal. There is a widespread belief in Pakistan that Imran's latest dharnas are backed by the Army. Imran Khan's last dharna in Islamabad had a history. Electorally, he was almost non-entity. In the 2008 elections his party got only one seat. But he got "miraculous" popularity close to the 2013 elections. His public meeting in Karachi was a huge success attended by mostly young men and women. Imran called this a tsunami. Since then he became obsessed with the world tsunami. Next he created tsunami in Quetta and then in Punjab. Now he started seeing himself as the next Prime Minister.
But the common man knows that it was not Imran's charisma but some other forces which mobilised crowds for his public meeting. Then Chief of the Pak Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha helped the formation of Defence of Pakistan council (DPC) of Islamist parties and groups. The DPC betrayed its agenda when it declared it would not allow rigging of election results against Imran Khan's PTI. Questions were asked who mobilised and financed massive crowds at his public meetings in Karachi, Quetta and Punjab. Before the elections, Islamists did not allow Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the Awami National Party (ANP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) to freely hold public meetings and threatened their voters. This helped Imran Khan's PTI emerge as the number two party in the National Assembly and the majority party in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where it formed government. But, he could not accept that his party did not win enough seats to make him the Prime Minister. He accused the Nawaz Sharif government of cheating him of 30 National Assembly and 50 Provincial Assembly seats. Initially, Imran's grumblings were confined to anti-Nawaz fulminations. But his dharna programme was announced as the Army-Government tussle over peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, trial of former President Gen Musharraf and relations with India; was coming into the open. He began a campaign for the ouster of Nawaz Sharif from the post of Prime Minister for alleged rigging of the 2013 elections.
After about 16 months of these elections Imran Khan started what he called "Azadi" march in Islamabad on August 14, 2014. Canada-based Alama Tahirul Qadri, who runs Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and calls himself an Army supporter, flew into Islamabad from Canada on June 23 vowing he would not go back without bringing revolution in Pakistan. When his plane landed in Islamabad he refused to come out of the plane unless the Corps Commander came to receive him. He came out after five hours when the Governor of Punjab went to receive him. Qadri held a separate dharna from that of Imran's in Islamabad. He brought his coffin saying he would not go back to Canada till the revolution came. In his dharna, Imran Khan said it would go on until Azadi from Nawaz Sharif was achieved. But things changed after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif fulminated in the UN General Assembly in September against India for not holding a plebiscite in Kashmir. This satisfied the Army and the crowd at the two dharnas began thinning out. Qadri wound up his dharna and flew back to Canada - whatever he did with his coffin. Imran khan found an excuse in the terrorist attack on the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, for ending his dharna leaving behind tone of garbage in Islamabad. But that dharna did not help his political image. He lost the subsequent bi-elections. His party's performance was abysmal in Occupied Kashmir also. The people in Pakistan have no doubt that the 2014 dharna and the 2016 still-born dharna were backed by the Army to destabilise the Nawaz Sharif government. In 2014 the government declared a red zone area and handed it over to the Army. But the Army did not stop the crowds entering the courtyard of the Parliament House by jumping over its wall and burning fire to cook food. Emboldened and unstopped, the unruly crowds attacked the Pakistan Television building and vandalised the equipments. The Pak Rangers, who practically work under the Army, came and hugged them. The crowd dispersed when the Army came. But no arrests were made.
But this time the Army seems to be reluctant to produce another dharna in the heart of Islamabad. As it appears that the image of a 'battle-hardened' Pak Army in general and a carefully crafted larger-than-life profile of Gen Raheel Sharif in particular, got a severe beating after the surgical strike of Indian Special Forces against the terrorist launch pads in Occupied Kashmir last month. Instead of a serious review of its own policy as suggested by the politicians and choking the funds and putting the terror ideologues like Hafiz Saeed behind bars, what the Army did is to hound a prominent Pak journalist, Cyril Almeida. Still in order to satisfy its bruised ego, the Army insists that the person behind the 'leak' on which Almeida's story was based, should be found and brought to justice. Thus, in order to avoid another possible fiasco, which may again divert the public attention to the Army for destabilising an elected government, this time the Army did not oblige the former Pak skipper. Same was the story behind the lack of enthusiasm showed by the Army-backed outfits like DPC, JuD etc. |
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