PTI has learnt nothing
The purpose of the PTI’s agitation last year was to force the Prime Minister to resign. The party failed to achieve the objective, but it has not drawn the right conclusion from the failure. This time Imran Khan wants to coerce the four members of the ECP to quit. Once again he has declined to follow the means specified in the constitution to achieve the end. Imran Khan is a man in a hurry. The PTI leader fails to realise that it would set a bad precedent if members of the ECP were to be sent home through street power.
The PTI has postponed the rally it had announced to hold at Islamabad’s D-Chowk for purely tactical reasons. Instead of wasting its energies in Islamabad while it faces crucial bye-elections in NA-122, it has decided to concentrate on the constituency by holding a public rally in Lahore on September 9 on the eve of the polls. After the bye-elections are over on September 11, the PTI would announce a new date for the Islamabad protest.
The decision by the Supreme Court to stay the by-polls in NA-154 was based on the interpretation of law. Painful as it was for the PTI, Imran Khan has decided to bite the bullet. Eyes would be, meanwhile, riveted on NA-122 where the PTI has already started a full-fledged campaign. The PML-N would be at a disadvantage as practically all of its high profile leaders stand debarred from canvassing on account of holding government offices while Imran Khan and a number of other party leaders from Punjab would be free to address the gatherings.
That a number of prominent members of other parties have recently joined the PTI should encourage the party to strengthen the system. To ensure that the next elections are fair, it should put up concrete proposals before the election reforms committee. Imran Khan needs to realise that democracy is incompatible with the type of unruly and violent agitation that characterised the August 2014 sit-ins and marches.
