A dangerous game By Editorial

Imran Khan, Tahirul Qadri and their respective supporters are to march together on Aug 14 — and with that decision has gone much of the veneer of democratic protest that Imran Khan and the PTI have tried to cling to in recent days. Consider the PTI’s democratic credentials and thus far constitutional demands. The PTI in May 2013 broke the PPP and PML-N duopoly and won millions of votes, with the electorate in virtually every part of the country responding to PTI candidates. Since that election, the PTI is governing one of the country’s four provinces and is the third largest party in the National Assembly. Now, even though the PTI’s demand for electoral reforms appears to be morphing into a demand for the exit of the government, the PTI has at least publicly pledged to remain within the bounds of the Constitution and is not seeking the end of democracy itself. Contrast that with the very different nature of Tahirul Qadri’s politics. Mr Qadri professes no allegiance to the Constitution, does not believe in any version of democracy most Pakistanis voters would be familiar with, has explicitly aligned himself with anti-democratic forces in the past and, perhaps most dangerously, appears to believe that his standing as a religious leader for a very small section of the population gives him a veto over what kind of system of governance Pakistanis ought to have. In short, Mr Qadri is a dangerous demagogue who is expressly seeking the toppling of the very foundations of the state through any means necessary. How, then, can an ostensibly democratic party like the PTI line up alongside Mr Qadri? While both the PTI and PAT have bandied around the term ‘revolution’, the former has so far talked about improving the system already in place while the latter wants the overthrow of the system itself. So whose agenda will prevail? Imran Khan’s still somewhat democratic agenda or Tahirul Qadri’s explicitly undemocratic agenda? To be sure, the PML-N has bungled the handling of both the PTI and PAT protests. Little can justify any of the tactics used by the government so far. Yet, if the PTI and PAT themselves stand side by side and adopt a common agenda, what room does that leave for the PML-N to try and negotiate its way out of the present crisis? Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif himself suggested over the weekend that the door to seat recounts remains very much open. Yesterday, too, while decrying the politics of protest in a speech, the prime minister sounded a conciliatory note when it came to the legitimate demands of the PTI. But Mr Sharif sounded a very different tone when it came to the PAT. Freedom march, revolution march — whatever the nomenclature, the demands have to be just and constitutional.