The containers could be seen from far off corners of the Constitution Avenue. The roads remained choked, the music grew louder by the day, temperatures kept rising till the touched the boiling point , PTV was raided, important buildings were assaulted, three people lost their lives and more than 650 got injured during a pantomime called Inquilab (aka Azadi) March last year.
These few lines are but the highlights from the months-long torment that Pakistanis were exposed to, without reaching any logical conclusion. So basically PTI and PAT rolled back their national salvation program – PAT on a lesser unfortunate day, while PTI didn’t budge until the Peshawar army school massacre.
This might be not the best times to recall this PTI-led Azadi March. But it does have relevance with the party continuing to denounce the whole system, calling it names and maligning each one sitting in the Parliament. Even after their seeming resignations it has no qualms over becoming a part of the Senate.
The realization would hit any sane mind while analyzing this situation: a party, that relentlessly criticizes the functioning of democracy, has an entire province under its rule.
PTI leadership has twisted ideas about the validity of the system from the onset of their ‘struggle’. General Elections were rigged only where PTI lost. And the Parliament is corrupt, except for the Senate that comprises the major half of the Parliament itself.
Loaded with paradoxes, PTI has failed to share their view on these issues with the public. Struggling with the pressure from within to sit in the National Assembly, the PTI leadership does not hesitate to land themselves in an embarrassing situation by running for Senate polls.
If there was still a chance to mend the ways of the current parliamentary system then why did the party not take this path from the very onset? If this is beyond repair then why insult one part of the Parliament while trying to grab seats in the other half?
If ‘Naya Pakistan’ could be achieved through sitting in the Parliament then what was the point in jeopardizing lives? What was the point in paralyzing Pakistan through untimely calls for protests? Can the responsible leadership of PTI ever explain to the people of Pakistan what they achieved through the container politics?
Even if PTI had achieved some sort of a moral ground through protesting against the ill practices in Pakistani politics, they lost it ages ago too by sticking to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government , and now by deciding to sit in the Senate.
If the PTI leadership has not completely forgotten the dreams they were wooing the public with, it must now name the list of people who lost their lives in their march. No one has since talked about the imaginary protestors who were either ‘killed’ by the authorities and also scooped up to be dumped elsewhere as per PTI’s chairman. The deceased must have names and families – none of them surfaced.
Why? In the official ledgers there are only three men who died during those weeks. But anyone who was following the Azadi march can recall the traumatized face of Imran khan pronouncing the death of many ‘hundreds’ of the protestors.
Perched on a self-proclaimed moral high ground, the PTI has to be honest to its voters about the reasons behind taking the rigging issue to the roads and now the sudden change of heart. Although still predicting 2015 to be the year of another General Elections, the PTI chairman has moved very quickly from the gallows where he pledged to end the corrupt system.
The days on the calendar have changed, but the PTI chairman is still using the same old rhetoric – failing each time to prove anything except how paradox-ridden the leadership is.