Break the deadlock
Mysterious banners have been put up by a paper organisation calling on the army chief to impose martial law. While the language used in the banners does not specifically call for army takeover, the central organiser of the Move on Pakistan Party minces no words while explaining his mission. Speaking to a national daily he has claimed that the goal of his campaign was to suggest to the army chief to impose martial law and then set up a government of technocrats with himself personally supervising it. He also claimed that the absence of Nawaz Sharif from the country for more than 40 days proved that there was no need of a political government as those who have been running the country will keep running it. The chief of the Move on Pakistan Party says he is also considering holding rallies from Faisalabad to Lahore and from Karachi to Sukkur in the second phase to convince the army chief to intervene ‘for the betterment of the country.’
In any democratic country the call would have led to the prosecution of those responsible for inciting the army to violate the constitution. Their connections would have been probed to discover if they were speaking on someone else’s behest from inside or outside the country. It is however too much to expect in Pakistan that the government or any of the several habitual litigants would go to court over the incident.
The government has wasted more than three months in dilly dallying, failing meanwhile to resolve its differences with the opposition over ToRs. It needs to take measures to urgently break the deadlock. The government being the biggest loser has the greater responsibility in this respect. The opposition which has an equal stake in the system is also expected to act responsibly. The two sides have to learn from the 1977 happenings when the parties took too long to settle their differences providing an opportunity to those waiting in the wings to stage a coup.