The sit-ins by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri have been going on for almost a month. As a consequence the government in Islamabad is more or less paralysed, there is a security situation in the capital, the stock exchanges have tumbled, the rupee has lost about three percent of its value, direct foreign investment is frozen, the Presidents of Sri Lanka and Maldives have cancelled their visits and the visit of the Chinese President is in doldrums. Conservative estimate of the loss to the country is of about Rs500-600 billion.
Imran has and continues to repudiate the oath he took after being elected to the National Assembly. Without going in points on which there could be different opinions, no one can deny that his tamasha of “long march”, “sit-in” and “civil disobedience” has harmed and continues to harm the wellbeing and prosperity of Pakistan. One does not understand the purpose behind the continuation of the sit. Now there is hardly any possibility of Nawaz Sharif resigning and mid-term elections. In fact to start with Imran was ill advised. The whole scheme was amateurish. The political parties would never agree to an elected government being forced to resign by a motley gathering of a few thousand people. To agree to the resignation of Nawaz would have set an unacceptable precedent. This was the reason behind the full support to Nawaz by all the political parties in the National Assembly. Imran must realise that his bid to derail the economic progress and seek the resignation of Nawaz Sharif has failed.
Now that PTI assembly members have gone back to the assemblies and all his demands except the resignation of Nawaz Sharif have been agreed to, to continue with the sit-in will only further damage the economy and is not in the national interest.
It is time that Imran should retrieve his position and announce that he is calling off the sit-in in Islamabad in national interest to enable the government to make preparations for the impending visit of the Chinese President.
INAM KHAWAJA
New York, USA