- Now you have to put up with it
No ruling party in Pakistan has been so arrogant and full of itself as the PTI led by Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is himself hubris incarnate. The opposition has been browbeaten, abused and ignored in the National Assembly. Offers of help by the opposition to jointly deal with the challenges faced by the country have been dismissed by the PM as attempts to seek an NRO. The intolerant PTI administration has meanwhile manipulated the NAB to persecute and torture the opposition leaders. Mr Khan has repeatedly challenged the opposition to launch protests against his government. When the JUI-F chief announced its Azadi March, he was mockingly dismissed as the twelfth man in a cricket team, underlining his perceived irrelevance.
The PTI cannot blame the JUI-F chief for refusing to talk to its delegation unless it brought the PM’s resignation along. The ruling party was asking for such treatment. The PM has made his bed and will have to lie in it. For over a month PTI ministers along with the PM’s special assistant for information have made fun of the Azadi March and ridiculed the opposition in general. They have put pressure on the JUI-F leadership to call off the march. They have even approached the courts to declare it illegal. Now that their schemes have failed they need to allow the marchers to proceed peacefully to their destination. Any effort to stop them by force is likely to create a law and order situation that would harm the country.
The ruling party complains that the opposition is on the warpath ignoring that the government is fighting the Kashmir cause at international forums and the country is facing a difficult economic situation. It is time the government recognises as a blunder its failure to take the opposition on board over Kashmir and the national economy. To avoid the recurrence of further protests the government has to show respect to the opposition, take recourse to legislation through Parliament instead of ruling by ordinances, follow parliamentary rules and traditions that require production orders for parliamentarians in custody, and stop manipulating the NAB to harass and victimize the opposition leaders.