PTI’s post-march future

EDITORIAL: Addressing party workers at Charsadda, KPK, on Sunday, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan hinted at undertaking yet another million-man march to Islamabad and this time, he said, ‘we would be better prepared to cope with police brutality’.

When will that march take place? He indicated no timeline. Calling off his march to reach Islamabad’s D-Chowk on May 25, he promised to return within six days, and then amended his stance by saying that he would announce the date for the march later on. That being the perspective one tends to believe that there is no change insofar as his determination to reach Islamabad and overthrow the Shehbaz Sharif-headed coalition government is concerned.

However, his latest take on the march to Islamabad reflects two inabilities on his part to comprehend the realities on ground that had led to his march fiasco. One, it is difficult to accept that his march was undertaken without proper preparations.

To win over the public support for his march to Islamabad he had addressed over a dozen public meetings where he repeatedly cajoled the attendees to be ready for the ‘three million’ man march to the Capital. And given the massive size of the highly charged participants at those public meetings, his plan to reach the D-Chowk then appeared to be an uncontested possibility.

But on May 25 this did not happen; the total number of marchers — who were disproportionately more from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where his party is in power than from Punjab or elsewhere — was nowhere near the magic number of ‘three million’. Two, excepting half a dozen PTI leaders who accompanied Imran Khan on his mobile container, no other senior PTI member joined the march as it headed to the D-Chowk. Sheikh Rashid too didn’t reach the D-Chowk; he called it off by offering an explanation that retains its enigma even today.

Imran Khan has not learnt anything from the widely recorded futility of long marches to Islamabad. No march to the Capital has ever succeeded in toppling a sitting government. The Constitution of Pakistan does possess a universally recognised provision of ousting a sitting prime minister — a successful vote of no-confidence against him or her. Earlier two prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Shaukat Aziz, survived votes of no-confidence against them.

Imran Khan, however, failed to defeat it. And this happened because of certain reasons. Not only did his party’s coalition partners desert him, some of his own party members in the National Assembly were fully ready to join Opposition’s no-confidence motion against him.

So, frankly speaking, Imran Khan has no chance to overthrow the government by knocking it out by use of street power — and more so now as the Shehbaz Sharif-headed coalition government has point blank refused to announce the date for ‘immediate’ elections. It has decided to stay put in power till August 2023 when the general elections are due as envisaged by the Constitution.

And in that there is also an ample opportunity for the Imran Khan-led PTI to show its mettle as a viable democratic option before the nation. The message the PTI leadership must get is that not the streets but the floor of the National Assembly is the arena it should now enter and tenaciously fight for its cause.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022