Another stop for the travelling circus
It’s the DPC’s way or the highway, democracy be smitten. When a political party, like, say, the JUI, says it won’t allow the resumption of Nato supply routes, there is the fig leaf of legitimacy there. Their not allowing is an allusion to their position in the democratic process. That they are going to use their leverage in the PCNS to stop the decision. That they are going to threaten to boycott future sessions or work up a storm in all the chambers of legislature that they are currently in.
When the DPC says it won’t allow it, it means something else. There is no way that it can get around implying vigilantism. After all, what leverage does this agglomeration of religious outfits have?
At the council’s gig at Peshawar, the members “rejected” the parliament’s decision on the Nato supply routes. They are well within their legal and moral right not to own a parliamentary decision. There would, at this moment, be many people who actually voted for the PPP, ANP or the Leagues who would not approve of the parliament’s decision. But the democratic process is what it is. Parties can campaign on a particular issue and when the burdens of governance or legislation hit them, they can realise that things are not what they seemed from the sidelines. They modify their stance and sell it to their respective electorates. If the latter don’t buy it, someone else comes next time. Sometimes parties still don’t change their point of view, like the JUI(F) doesn’t seem to be doing now. But even they have to realise their place in the scheme of things.
Some DPC leaders have asked the contractors and transporters than make the Nato transport possible not to cooperate voluntarily. Now, again, an economic boycott is a tried and tested form a civil action. KP’s ruling ANP could hardly find fault with this most Gandhian of methods. But the fact of the matter is that few transporters would not see this as the veiled threat that it is.
The government has its work cut out for it. It has to be careful in differentiating between the right to peaceful protest and the instigation to violence, a legal offence.
