KARACHI, Pakistan — Over two weeks into their separate protests, thousands of followers of the Pakistani Awami Tehreek (PAT) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) are continuing their sit-ins outside the parliament building in the federal capital, Islamabad, to topple the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
On Aug. 14, Pakistan’s day of independence, followers of Imran Khan, the opposition leader who heads the PTI, and PAT’s Dr. Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, who may have political ambitions but no seat in the parliament yet, led thousands of people to march toward Islamabad to oust the current government.
Khan, a former cricketing hero-turned politician, is leading the Azadi (Freedom) march, while ul-Qadri heads the Inqilab (Revolution) march.
It’s not known whether Sharif will step down willingly or be forced out, but the protesters’ spirits don’t seem to be waning. Camped outside of the parliament building, they’ve withstood scorching temperatures, heavy rains and dust storms.
Music, dance and fiery speeches
“The mood at both the camps continues to be upbeat. The PTI crowds start pouring in by evening and there is a lot of energy, music, dancing, interspersed with speeches. There is a general air of festivity … It’s all very colorful,” observed Ayaz Amir, a prominent columnist-turned politician who has been visiting the protesters gathered at D-Chowk — a major Islamabad intersection where a number of landmarks and government buildings stand.
Meanwhile, he says, the PAT crowd stays day and night. What they lack in music and dancing, the group makes up for in discipline, dedication and enthusiasm.
“There is no jostling and no eve-teasing or ogling in either camps — so common in a Pakistani crowd, which is quite refreshing. Even when food is being distributed to the PAT crowd, people queue and wait patiently,” Amir said.
“You’d want to go there every evening,” he said, adding, “I get a shot in the arm whenever I do!”
But over the past couple of weeks, the leaders seem to have lost some of their thunder — due, in part, to their own actions. Khan, a brash 61-year-old, has used words and issued threats that have not gone down well among his more conservative followers and created confusion about his movement’s intentions. For example, he has called for civil disobedience, but then also threatened to storm the prime minister’s house and “hold Nawaz Sharif by the neck and subject him to ruthless accountability.”
A coup of a different hue?
However, what were once hushed whispers are becoming louder, sounding the alarm bells in the corridors of power that the army might step in anytime.
“The situation seems to be tailor-made for an army intervention,” Amir told MintPress from Islamabad. A legislator in the National Assembly in 2008, he resigned from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), the current ruling party, after he was refused a ticket for the National Assembly for the May 2013 general elections.
“The deadlock persists. The negotiations between the government and the PTI have come to nothing, with neither side showing flexibility and so I fear the army will be sucked in,” he said.
Raza Rumi, an author, columnist, op-ed writer and political analyst, sees the government’s apparent inability to placate the protesters as “extremely significant” for the future “trajectory of democratization.”
This notion is echoed by Dr. Mohammad Taqi, a columnist with the Daily Times, an English-language daily. “No matter what the immediate outcome is after the deadline,” he said, “the democratic dispensation will come out weaker in the short- to mid-term.”
“It appears that the military is now at the center stage. The power balance has shifted and is a reversal of gains made during the last seven years or so,” Rumi said. “Nawaz Sharif’s authority and the legitimacy of the parliament has been undermined due to the rigging allegations and the public opinion manufactured by sections of the media.”
Taking stock of the situation and the military’s response, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group on Aug. 21 stated its fears that the Pakistani army might “decisively enter the fray” if it found the politicians to be “insufficiently wise.”
Ul-Qadri’s 48-hour deadline
On Aug. 25, tensions came to a head after Canadian-returned cleric ul-Qadri delivered an emotionally-charged ultimatum to PML-N legislators, telling them they had 48 hours “to pack up and leave the assemblies.”
“We do not believe in these assemblies … these elections and assemblies are unconstitutional,” he said.
But before the deadline ended, PAT’s ul-Qadri demanded that police to file a report about the clash in Lahore’s Model Town on June 17, in which 11 PAT workers were killed and nearly 100 others suffered injuries, and make public the investigation of the reports of the joint investigation team and judicial commission.
For over two months since the Model Town clashes, the Punjab government kept the Punjab police from recording the First Information Report by the PAT against the Punjab government. Even after the orders were issued by the Lahore High Court regarding the case registration, the Punjab government and the police under it failed to comply.
However, when the complaint was finally allowed to be lodged on Thursday, ul-Qadri rejected it, saying it did not include the name of the prime minister.
By the time this report was filed on Thursday, the army had asked all stakeholders, including the PTI, PAT as well as the government, to give them 24 hours to resolve the crises.
“#Army Chief General Raheel Sharif’s Meeting with #PTI Chairman #Imran Khan begins at Rawalpindi,” Major General Asim Bajwa, head of Inter-Services Public Relations, tweeted at almost 3 a.m. Friday (Pakistan time).
Alluding to the army pulling strings from a distance, Mohammad Jibran Nasir, a 27-year-old Karachi-based lawyer, said, “If it’s written in the script, it will happen, no matter.”
“If I were Nawaz Sharif, I’d walk up through the crowd, to Khan and Qadri, and sit with them and hold a dialogue with them, possibly even on top of the container [shipping containers that have been refitted with air conditioning and made bulletproof so Khan and ul-Qadri can essentially “live” there] in full public glare. I would not have waited this long and would have done it many days ago and asked the people what their grievances were,” Nasir said, exclaiming, “And if I were the army chief, I’d stop funding these two men!”
Word of caution by the army
In the days after Khan proclaimed that PTI would storm the prime minister’s residence, the army cautioned the stakeholders to show restraint after the first three rounds of negotiations between the PML-N and PTI. The army said all sides should show “wisdom” and “sagacity” to resolve the current impasse.
Although he said his tweets were personal, Bajwa, of the ISPR, used Twitter to make the agency’s first public response to the situation on Aug. 19, stating: “#ISPR Release1/3:Bldgs in red Zone r symbol of State&being protected by Army, therefore sanctity of these national symbols must be respected[.]”
At a briefing in Washington on Aug. 19, U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf emphasized that all parties should resolve their issues through “peaceful dialogue in a way that strengthens Pakistan’s democracy” and avoid violence, Dawn reported. Harf also noted that the United States is “keeping a close eye on political developments in Pakistan.”
The first round of negotiations began with the PTI coming up with a six-point charter of demands: the resignation of the prime minister and Punjab chief minister; an audit of the government’s expenses over the 14 months it has been in power; justice for those involved in alleged vote fraud in last year’s general elections; electoral reforms prior to new elections; re-elections for all assemblies; and the installation of an impartial interim government prior to new elections.
No way, Sharif says
While talking to the press after the conclusion of the third round of talks on Aug. 23, Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar said the government had agreed to all of PTI’s conditions, except the one calling for Sharif’s resignation.
Following that, the PTI found middle ground through the impasse and proposed a slightly watered down condition — that Sharif step down for 30 days while a high-powered judicial commission investigates PTI’s claims of vote-rigging in the May 2013 general elections. Sharif also rejected that proposition.
“As much as the PTI would like to downplay the idea of a high-powered judicial commission investigating the charges of electoral fraud, it remains the single most sensible and democracy-enhancing of possibilities mooted so far,” an Aug. 24 editorial in Dawn asserted.
After the fifth round of negotiations ended Thursday, Khan told his supporters that there will be no negotiations with the government, vowing, “No resignation, no negotiations!”
“However misplaced his fears, Nawaz Sharif believes the party will break up and the power will slip through his hands,” Amir, the columnist-turned politician, said. “This happened the last time, when some heavy guns from his party contacted the military” soon after Gen. Pervez Musharraf staged a coup and overthrew Sharif in 1999.
Sharif was jailed in 1999. From 2000 to 2008, he and 18 members of his family were forced into exile in Saudi Arabia by Musharraf. Sharif has since made a comeback, becoming Pakistan’s prime minister for a third time in the May 2013 elections.
“It is unclear if Nawaz Sharif will stay as prime minister, but even if he survives this challenge, he has been weakened and may not be able to deal with another round of confrontation with the opposition,” Rumi, the writer and political analyst, speculated.
Sharif’s government went into office almost 15 months months ago, but Pakistan still has no foreign minister. The defense and the water and power ministries are headed by a single minister, as are the information and law ministries. (Responding to questions from Reuters, a Sharif spokesperson told the agency that the government was seeking capable candidates and filling posts gradually.)
Chastised PM, weakened democracy
“Whichever way this phase ends, Pakistan’s democratic development has faced a major blow and, ironically, in the name of electoral reforms and justice,” Rumi said.
“Any face-saving will be arbitrated by the [military] establishment, it seems, making it the strongest player,” the Daily Times’ columnist Taqi noted, adding that the ground the army has lost in the civil-military relationship since 2008 will be recaptured after Sharif’s “wings” are “clipped.”
The lack of trust between the Sharif government and the army is an open secret. In a clear act of defiance, the government tried to enter into a trade agreement with India and held peace talks with the Taliban. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, the armed forces want control over foreign policy — especially where Afghanistan, India and the U.S. are concerned.
Moreover, there is a section of Pakistani society — one to which Taqi subscribes — that believes the “idea of launching the faux revolutionaries [Khan and ul-Qadri] was to chastise Nawaz Sharif for insisting on Gen. Musharraf’s trial [for treason].”
“The army also likes to cut to size its erstwhile protégés who have tried bucking it.” Taqi concluded.