Destablising system
Imran Khan had condemned the last shutdown of Karachi by Altaf Hussain calling it ‘an unacceptable blackmail of a whole city’. Now he has done the same on a much bigger scale, without batting an eye. He has paralysed one by one the three largest cities of the country playing havoc with the economy and causing suffering to over three hundred million people. Being a practitioner of the doctrine of ‘ends justifying the means’, he implemented shutdowns which stopped workers from proceeding to offices, labour from reaching the factories and children from attending schools. On Monday two patients reportedly died in ambulances which were not allowed to proceed to the hospitals. On December 18 Imran Khan intends to shut down the entire country.
The shopping centres were closed unwillingly by the business community. ‘Plague on both houses’ seems to be the general reaction of the class which blames the two parties for politicking at their expense. The PTI is being condemned for forcing the closures and the government for looking passively as the PTI blocked the city’s entry points and main arteries, thus ensuring that customers, local as well as from adjoining towns, did not reach the business centres and wholesale markets. This indicated to the trading community, which desperately looks for stability, that there was no effective government in the country.
The major bone of contention between the two sides are the TORs of the special investigation team (SIT). In his speech at Charing Cross Imran Khan offered to call off the countrywide shutdown if the government announced the formation of the judicial commission by Tuesday. In case this does not happen the PTI would go for Plan D. Among other moves this would include a march on the Sharif family’s Raiwind residence. The country has gone through enough disturbance during the last four months. The two parties have to realise that if the situation deteriorated further, other forces might step in on the pretext of restoring stability.