Power at any Cost

The ‘Pummel the PTI’ game is on at full swing

It has become a veritable tradition in Pakistani politics for a sitting government to employ every possible trick to make the life of its opponents miserable. And now, true to tradition, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government has pulled every trick it can find out of its hat to torment the leaders of its main rival party, the PTI. The late night arrest on 25 January of PTI Vice-President and spokesman, Fawad Chaudhry, is another dubious feather in the government’s cap following the harrowing arrests and treatment in custody of two other PTI leaders, Shehbaz Gill and Azam Swati, besides the incarceration, beating and harassment of several journalists seeming to favour PTI Chairman Imran Khan.

Fawad Chaudhry was taken into police custody soon after Mohsin Naqvi, a media house owner and a wheeler-dealer having close connections with the establishment and the PPP co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari, took charge as caretaker Chief Minister of the Punjab. The very purpose of appointing a neutral caretaker setup ahead of the general elections was foiled by appointing a blatantly partisan person at the helm of affairs. Leaving aside Naqvi’s private interactions with anti-Imran politicians, the coverage of the news channels he owns amply reflects his bias and antipathy for the PTI Chairman. His selection by-the-powers that be shows what is in store in the days to come and what kind of treatment the opposition PTI should expect from the authorities.

Although Fawad Chaudhry’s arrest has turned him into an instant hero for PTI’s supporters, it has also sent out a loud and clear message that the noose will now be tightened in earnest around PTI activists, at least in the Punjab. The ugly drama of how Chaudhry was picked up from his house in Lahore and later taken to Islamabad in defiance of the Lahore High Court’s orders to produce him in court played out all day on national television screens. The Punjab’s Inspector General of Police, Usman Anwar, brazenly told the court that he could not implement the court’s directions because he did not receive the message from the court stating Chaudhry should be produced there, owing to weak signals on his mobile phone. And the High Court judge magnanimously accepted the excuse, even while knowing full well that police officers get instant messages all the time through their exclusive wireless system. The lower court took several hours before it physically remanded Fawad Chaudhry to the Islamabad police in the late evening.

The Fawad Chaudhry episode has strengthened the PTI’s stance that it is being persecuted by the government at the centre, and now in Punjab. A majority of the ECP’s decisions regarding electoral matters went against the PTI and were later reversed by the superior judiciary. The Election Commission is the complainant against Fawad Chaudhry for his allegedly threatening remarks against the Chief Election Commission’s members and their families. The charge against Chaudhry makes the commission even more controversial at a time when its credibility in the eyes of PTI supporters is already quite low. The PTI’s criticism of the current electoral body, especially the Chief Election Commissioner Sikandar Sultan Raja, who was ironically appointed by the PTI government, has been well-known for long. The way local elections were recently held in Karachi and Hyderabad, and the inordinate delay in the compilation and announcement of results, has also tarnished its image. Any future election held under its supervision will inevitably breed more discontent, further damage the democratic process and lead to greater political instability.

The charges registered in the FIR against Fawad Chaudhry include, among others, the charge of sedition (Section 124-A of the PPC) for criticising or allegedly threatening election officials. The sedition charge is telling of far more than what meets the eye, and of the real mover of the case. It is in line with the legacy of our disturbing political history — opposition politicians facing charges of sedition and being termed traitors. But our history also shows how rulers do not achieve much from charging opposition leaders with sedition, as neither does this make the ruling parties popular among the public, nor does it reduce the support for the opposition, in this case the PTI. However, the temporary gain the authorities may be looking at is to instill fear among PTI activists and silence their vocal criticism of the government and other state institutions.

Strong-arm tactics against the PTI leaders have political significance at a time when the provincial assemblies of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa stand dissolved and it is a constitutional requirement that fresh elections for them be held within 90 days. All the surveys by research companies and journalists conducted so far point to a lead by a wide margin for the PTI against its main opponents, including the PML-N and the PPP. The last nine-and-a-half months of the present government’s tenure have seen an unprecedented price-hike and rampant unemployment. The PMLN-PPP combo seems to be desperate for its political survival, and it is quite obvious that it will use even coercive administrative measures to demoralise PTI supporters. An atmosphere is being created to give the general public the message that that Imran Khan and his party stand no chance of returning to power. The objective is to make people depressed and stay away from casting their votes on polling day so that the PTI loses due to a low turn-out. The purpose of appointing Mohsin Naqvi, a hardcore anti-Imran Khan activist, as the caretaker Chief Minister of the Punjab is to give the same message to local notables, who tend to side with the prospective winner: stay away from Imran Khan and join the PMLN-PPP alliance.

Strong rumours are also doing the rounds that Imran Khan will be arrested soon. Circumstantial evidence supports this fear. The night the police nabbed Fawad Chaudhry, dozens of policemen also surrounded Imran Khan’s house in Zaman Park, Lahore, but did not enter his house as hundreds of PTI workers having anticipated as much, rushed there, which created a situation that could have led to a clash between the police and the activists, causing bloodshed. Better sense apparently prevailed, that worst case scenario was avoided. And now hundreds of PTI activists are camped outside Khan’s residence to prevent his possible arrest. The PTI leader and many others believe that another murder attempt will also be made on him. His ally, veteran leader Shaikh Rasheed Ahmed claims that efforts were made to slow-poison Imran Khan, but he was saved thanks to an early warning. The thinking among opposing power circles seem to be that once Imran Khan is removed from the scene, his party will fall prey to internal wrangling over leadership and doing away with Khan will end his narrative-building through the media, leaving his opponents, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Maryam Nawaz and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, free to raise their voice.

It was partly because of the fear of persecution that many within the PTI, like former federal minister Ejaz Shah, as well as Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi had warned Imran Khan not to dissolve the two provincial assemblies ahead of them completing their tenure, because holding the governments there gave the PTI ‘protection’ against any possible crackdown. In a statement, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had also warned Imran Khan that if he went ahead with the dissolution, he might not be able to bear the treatment that he might be subjected to. Before this, Maulana Fazlur Rehman had warned Imran Khan of “heating the ground underneath his feet”implying he would be implicated in several cases and incarcerated. However, presumably thinking a caretaker setup might be inimical to the party, and that elections could be postponed on one or the other pretext, the PTI Chairman was adamant about dissolving the two assemblies to force an early generally election. Still, one wonders what exactly he had in mind.

The PTI does have a large support base, but it lacks the organisational strength to launch effective, sustained agitation on the streets if Imran Khan is put behind bars. People will vote for Imran Khan, but are unlikely to come on to the streets in force. On the other side, the persecution of the PTI leadership may cause anti-Imran parties to further lose public support and it will be hard for them to win the elections in the Punjab and KP without massive manipulation and rigging. Nonetheless, those in power are confident that they can ‘manage’ the political course in their favour and keep Imran Khan and his party out of power. So the ‘Contain-Imran’ project will probably continue. Things are unlikely to stop with Fawad Chaudhry’s arrest. The PTI should brace for a full-fledged crackdown.