The PTI’s fan following – or Insafians, as some have taken to calling them, in order to avoid the delightful but crass portmanteau “Youthias” – are up in arms.
Anyone with even a slight grasp of politics would classify the PTI’s performance in the elections as stellar. They’ve destroyed some pretty heavy hitters and have even managed to form the government in one province. But the Insafians aren’t having any of it. We had been winning in the Punjab as well, they claim.
Now their claim about that one Karachi seat is sort of understandable; who doesn’t view any seat the MQM wins with suspicion? But the claim about the Punjab is a hard sell.
Now the high-maintenance, dolled-up DHA babes have as much of a right to protest as subsistence level farmers in Rahimyar Khan – let no one say otherwise. But, also, let no one say they don’t look “fabulous, jaani, simply fabulous” while doing it. First there was talk of “election tans”, then there were the sartorial discussions on “protest chic.”
After the PML-N’s Saad Rafiq ate the PTI’s Hamid Khan for supper on a TV talk show, with the latter, surprising for a seasoned lawyer, bumbling and sweating, the Lahore protest’s plug was pulled out. In fact, “I never asked them to do this,” he said. But the protesters still aren’t willing to take any such call, even if it is their candidate’s, till, perhaps, His Lordship himself recovers and makes a drive from SKMH to Lalak Jaan Chowk.
I don’t blame them. It is a spot of outdoors fun. Hotspot Ice-cream, Subway and OPTP are a stone’s throw away from the protest site. As is DHA cinema; a bit of Aashiqui 2 to while away the lulls in the protest.