Going round in circles

Still no end to the dharnas

An inconvenient stalemate has gripped the government-dharna confrontation. Clearly the protests have outlasted even the most liberal estimates. PTI leaders may posture confidently about the long haul, but even a cursory glance over the recent chronology of events shows how they expected a solution, a successful one from their point of view, much sooner. And that, of course, meant seeing the back of the prime minister, followed by an overhaul of the election commission, and eventually a clear and undisputed election. Yet Nawaz is clearly going nowhere. At least, he is not leaving the way Imran wants him to, that is before electoral fraud is proved far beyond the streets.

That does not mean, however, that the last month or so has been uneventful in any way. Granted, the opposition threw its weight behind the prime minister – to the extent that Nawaz ended up symbolising democracy – but the government has suffered considerable damage. Even opposition support was not without a very bitter package. Then there’s the military. Till not so long ago, when the Musharraf trial was the biggest feather in Nawaz’s cap, the ruling party carefully choreographed a growing friction with the khakis – the belligerence of the two Khwajas being a case in point. Not so any longer, though, especially after the premier had to go to the military for ‘facilitation’.

More battle lines have been drawn. Sections of the media, for example, are clearly split into pro- and anti-government sections. Some attack the protests; there is talk of a script, some even brand them enemies of the state. And others have no love lost for the government, and reproduce Imran’s, and Qadri’s, venom against the N league to no end. There was also the longish drama of negotiations, spoiled first by Imran’s insistence of sticking to the resignation demand, and rubbished soon afterwards after the government’s crackdown and arrests of PTI and PAT workers. It did not help the government, of course, that the land’s most senior courts found its actions very objectionable, and see nothing constitutionally wrong with the dharnas. The print media is equally confused, having to process information from both sides, carrying analyses justifying and ridiculing the protests at the same time. But despite what has been, the final call will definitely have to come from the leaders of the confronting parties. At the end of the day those leading their packs will all have to come half way, and find a binding solution that can be sold to their followers. The longer such a development takes, the deeper new fault-lines will grow, and the worse off the whole country will be.