Imran Khan and the opposition march: what goes around comes around
In its first year in office, the Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf (PTI) government has had to backtrack on many of its promises and policy positions, but if there is one thing Prime Minister Imran Khan hasn't taken a U-turn on, it's his hard-line stance toward political opponents. Both Asif Zardari of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) are in jail, as is Sharif's daughter, Maryam.
Despite the incarceration of their top leadership and reservations on the legitimacy of the 2018 election that brought Imran Khan to power, the two major opposition parties, the PPP and the PML-N have not resorted to street agitation against the government. The call for an "Azadi" march, promising freedom from the ruling PTI, comes instead from Fazl-ur-Rehman of the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI-F), an Islamic political party.
As they say, what goes around comes around.
The government maintains that Fazl-ur-Rehman’s grievances come from his resounding loss in the election last year, with the march scheduled to exploit the sentiments of his party’s young followers, some of whom are students at Islamic seminaries. The government is also criticizing the march for creating, potentially, a domestic crisis at a time when the ruling party is facing a serious foreign policy predicament in Kashmir.
PM Imran's government alleges a more sinister plan at play, one that employs religion to smear political opponents and exploits religious sentiments for political gain.
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
JUI-F and those supporting their legal right to free assembly and protest have reminded the PTI, that it too had protested against Sharif's government back in 2014, when the PML-N had merely been in power for a year. Then too, businesses suffered as a result of the 126 day long sit-in in the capital, and even the Chinese Prime Minister’s visit to Islamabad had to be cancelled.
Moreover, the law is based on precedent, so once the PTI set the precedent of locking the capital down for 126 days for the sake of political agitation, on what grounds can it deny the same to the JUI-F?
But the government alleges a more sinister plan at play, one that employs religion to smear political opponents and exploits religious sentiments for political gain.
True as that may be, there are instances of the PTI pandering to the religious right. Taking a page out of PTI’s book, a far-right Islamist political party, Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP), also staged a sit-in in 2017 to demand the then law minister’s resignation because of slight changes made to the words of an oath taken by public office holders.
It is relevant to note that while the PTI sit-in in 2014 did not achieve its objectives and was disbanded after 126 days, the TLP protest achieved its objective within 20 days. The religion card therefore, is potent, as the PTI well knows.
For its part, the JUI-F asserts that it is merely exercising its constitutional right to protest. It also insists that the people are fed up with the IMF-driven economic policies of the current government, which have resulted in high inflation, a barrage of indirect taxes and rising unemployment, making life difficult for the common Pakistani. They predict that hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis of varied political persuasions will join their march on Islamabad later this month.
How then can the government avoid a showdown with Fazal-ur-Rehman's JUI-F? For starters, Khan will need to change his confrontational style of politics. He will need to reach out to opposition leaders and try to build consensus on basic principles, such as the idea that using religion for political gain is eventually detrimental to all political players. The PML-N has very recently been on the receiving end of this and the PPP has already stated on record that they are reluctant to join the JUI-F march for this reason. Therefore, Khan may well find them to be allies on this subject.
But in order to reach out to them, he will need to shun his self-righteousness and admit past mistakes. He will also need to tone down his rhetoric and refrain from constantly making corruption allegations against political opponents. It is best to leave it to the courts to take decisions on who is corrupt. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is advised to treat his political opponents with respect.
But that might be too much to ask. Recently, during a trip to China, Imran Khan said he wished he could emulate President Xi's example of putting 500 corrupt ministerial-level people in jail. The statement doesn't inspire confidence. His politics are not conciliatory and so the showdown with Fazal-ur-Rehman seems inevitable, an ironic hand of karma that exposes the precedents set by Khan himself.
The writer is a lawyer who lives in London and tweets @ayeshaijazkhan
