In the midst of firing on Imran Khan, the selection of a new army chief, a plethora of cases in the superior Courts, and the Long March it would seem a perfect storm is brewing within the country. These events are all the more tragic in the back drop of the devastation of the recent floods and the sad state of the economy and yet many in the corridors of power seem apathetic to the situation. Were these events for real some of us may assume a well scripted soap opera is unfolding before us. Sadly this is not the case; we live in a nation where tragedies can only be measured against the enormity of the previous one we faced and somehow the senses become dead to the pain, the anguish and the sense of despair.
Agree with Imran Khan or not, he seems to have jolted the collective conscious of the masses to at least think of the state of affairs. Whether the Long March he has called remains a platform of complaints or yields the election he wants to be held remains to be seen. Giving him the credit for what is due he has got the message across that he controls, for now, the street power. To those uncomfortable with this 'show of force' perhaps the only recourse would be a bullet, and that is what happened when his convoy was attacked and he sustained injuries. The modus operandi of the attack would seem to suggest that it was a tactic to create panic and fear and some sort of veiled warning to the Khan.
Imran Khan, it would seem, does not scare easily and if anything it galvanised his support base to a frenzy of revenge, which he was quick to calm down. He knows well that civil strife on the streets is the very excuse his opponents want to crack their whips even harder. Yet the attack on Imran was close on the heels a the tragic murder of a well respected journalist Arshad Shareef in Kenya. Between the Kenyan authorities and the Pakistan government the whole matter has been botched such a degree that any impartial investigation into the murder becomes more remote by the day. This is hardly surprising as in Pakistan since 1995 over 97 journalists have been murdered and only in one of those deaths did the investigation yield any results.
Meanwhile the country's superior courts have been inundated with a variety of cases during the past four to five months. Many of these cases have references related to the Constitution of the country and others are matters of restoration or protection of rights. By and large the decisions that have come out have been fair and it is expected that not all parties would be totally satisfied. We as a nation still have to understand that the Constitution is only a thin legal fabric over the body politic of the nation and through that cloth it will always beg for the Constitution to be modified to keep up with the times. On the other hand in a nation of 220 million it puts enormous pressure on 3 or 5 justices of the Court to be the only ones to uphold the laws of the country. A testimony to many that all other institutions seem to have forgotten their oath to uphold the law and the Constitution!
After much speculation and rumour it finally emerges that at the end of the month the incumbent Chief of Army Staff shall retire. While one can argue whether the current Prime Minister, Shahbaz Shareef, has the sole right to decide upon the new army chief, given that he is the incumbent, the whole process through which the incumbent Prime Minister is approaching this is bizarre. He has made no secret of the fact that he has been consulting his elder brother, a former PM and a convicted absconder, on the choice of the new appointment. If that was not enough during these consultations a diplomatic passport was also slipped through to the former PM? These brazen acts of defiance of the laws of Pakistan by a sitting Prime Minister are a precedent that cannot sit well with those of us who have a few ounces of grey matter between our ears.
As these lines are being penned down there is noise by some government parliamentarians to take Imran Khan to task for 'wrong[y accusing the US for his regime change' because Imran Khan recently said he has 'put the incident behind him'. It is interesting that these parliamentarians are quick to jump to the defence of the US but remain silent on castigating the Kenyan government for the murder of one of the nations most upright journalists.
Indeed these a troubled times for Pakistan and the polarisation between the political camps is immense. As much as it is the right of Imran Khan to have a protest march, he must also be aware that the election may just happen in the middle of next year. Having shown his street muscle he may have to tack a new course of political moves to maintain his political pull within the nation. it might well be a good time to take steps to move his PTI from a movement to a true political party and to make plans for not only the elections but the reforms that are so essential in the country.
