Veteran politician Javed Hashmi has suddenly recalled he had a lot more information on the 2014 sit-in the PTI staged in Islamabad against alleged electoral rigging than he realised at the time that needed to be made public. So he held a press conference in his Multan hometown to make sensational allegations against those he said "scripted" the sit-in. No, he did not mean only the retired ISI chief who was rumoured to have advised Imran Khan on his protest strategy but a wider cast of characters, including some of the then serving as well as retired army officers, and former Supreme Court chief justice Nasir-ul-Mulk. Indeed, Imran had spurred unsavoury suspicions when he announced the umpire was about to raise his finger. He was to later try to explain that the umpire he referred to was Almighty God rather than a worldly authority. Few would buy that explanation. But more than two years past the event, Hashmi has come up with brand new allegations.

He has claimed that some "disgruntled" elements -he named then serving Lieutenant General Tariq Khan- wanted to fail CoAS Raheel Sharif and destroy parliamentary system through Imran Khan. Also pointing the finger at the judiciary, he said that PTI Chairman had told him CJ Tassaduq Hussain Jilani was due to retire and the new CJ Nasir-ul-Mulk would dissolve the assemblies under a Supreme Court order. In other words, there existed an army-judiciary collusion - without the Army chief being on board - for the overthrow of the PML-N government and with it the parliamentary democracy project too. No amount of head scratching helps untangle this riddle. First, it is difficult to figure out who had wanted to use whom - the disgruntled elements Imran and the judiciary or the PTI Chairman the other two? As head of the party that won the second largest number of popular vote -despite alleged rigging - it would be against his own interests to undermine the system which offered him the hope of winning power at some point. If the argument is that after dissolving the assemblies the CJ would have called new elections, in that case he would have been colluding right from the start, and delivered when he actually got the opportunity. To that later. Second, there is the claim that 'disgruntled' elements wanted to do something the army chief did not. Which means it was undoable, since the way this army is structured nothing can happen without the chief's involvement.

The Hashmi conspiracy theory mix makes little sense, though its timing makes much sense regarding intent and objective. The gentleman has been in the political wilderness ever since he left the PTI and had to resign his National Assembly seat as well. The general elections are round the corner. This is time therefore for him to curry favour with his old party boss, and win an assembly ticket for himself and possibly for his daughter as well. No wonder he iterated "Nawaz Sharif was, is, and will always be my leader".

Imran may have dismissed Hashmi's allegations as that of a person who has lost his mental balance, but the latter knows what he is doing. He tried to malign a former CJ in a purported plot aimed at the overthrow of the Nawaz Sharif government just as a new Supreme Court bench was to start hearing the Panama corruption scandal case involving Sharif and his family. It is worth noting that he has based his entire case on what one or the other PTI leader said in his presence. He quotes Imran, for instance, as having told him Justice Mulk would dissolve the assemblies. And that when he asked Jahangir Tareen why the umpire had not raised his finger, his answer was that "they [soldiers] are not coming because we could not fulfil the commitment of bringing in the required number of people." And further that Shah Mehmood Qureshi said in Imran's presence that the elections were not rigged. In every instance, it is his word against individual PTI leaders, no tangible evidence to back his claims. There is no way of knowing whether any of these conversations took place. What is known is that the army stayed neutral. And that a three-member judicial commission - formed on PTI's demand to probe allegations of rigging in the 2013 elections - headed by Justice Mulk, rejected the PTI's contention on organised rigging and blamed a number of electoral 'irregularities' on the Election Commission staff. It would be helpful if Hashmi Sahib clarifies why Justice Mulk didn't favour the PTI when the opportunity presented itself.

With the start of Panama case proceedings in the SC, this episode will soon be forgotten by the media and the PTI. But certain others accused of 'scripting' the PTI sit-in may not let go. Retired Lieutenant General Tariq Khan for one is not ready to forget or forgive him for "accusing me of planning some sort of a coup in my time and day." He has issued a long, angry rebuttal saying he would have ignored Hashmi's tirades had they been just about his (the general's) person, "but this involves a whole institution, belittles its leadership and defames it in the eyes of the people for no reason and as such needs a response." He disclosed he had already asked "the authorities concerned to deal with it officially, and they have confirmed that they would." It's unclear who the 'authorities concerned' might be, but Javed Hashmi's remarks are likely produce a result opposite to the one he hoped for.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2017