PTI’s method of protest has its ramifications
The PTI has s veered towards an extreme right position. This was brought out graphically by two top PTI leaders sharing the stage at a Karachi anti-US rally with leaders of JI, JUP and the banned JuD. The PTI’s club wielding workers in KP meanwhile have been tasked to stop NATO supplies by force. This they are doing by illegally breaking open the truck containers to check their contents and roughing up the drivers in case they resist. Is the party abandoning the peaceful parliamentary path which brought it to power in KP and provided it a respectable place in the National Assembly? If so, the PTI would compromise its position among its constituency of urban educated youth which it had assiduously created over years. Does Imran Khan realise that choking NATO supply routes violates the UN resolution on Afghanistan, our own Constitution and all our agreements with the US and NATO? Has Imran Khan lost confidence in the rule of law?
A one day protest in Peshawar would have been enough to express PTI’s resentment against the drone attacks. With the KP legislators protesting outside the US consulate in Peshawar and the US embassy in Islamabad the message would have been delivered in no uncertain terms. The protests outside the parliament house were also perfectly in order. If all this failed, the PTI could have taken up the matter in the National Assembly. But to block the NATO supplies through force over weeks and months is both unrealistic and harmful. What will the PTI do if Washington decided to get its supplies through other countries or by air despite heavy costs? Would the party then go a step further and cross over from its present extremist position to the next stage of confrontation which is militancy?
The confrontation might appeal to a handful of elements in the PTI who are ideologically closer to the TTP but it will put off the vast majority of its supporters as the common man in the province would soon be facing the brunt of a choked GT road which serves as KP’s lifeline. Over five months in power and the PTI has yet to cope with the province’s s actual issues like unemployment, deteriorating law and order situation, growing price hike, dilapidated infrastructure, and failing social services delivery system. Why doesn’t the party focus on resolving these issues instead of confronting the federation which would ultimately have to intervene to open the traffic?
