PAT Chairman Tahirul Qadri is preparing for a fresh confrontation with the government. He has been staging periodic, albeit unsuccessful, protest demonstrations to demand justice for the victims of 2014 police firing at his Model Town residence/office. This time though he seems to have at least two good reasons to feel confident about giving hard time to his antagonists in the ruling party. First, despite the government efforts to keep it under wraps, the Justice Najafi report on the incident that left 14 people dead and some 80 others injured, 51 of them with bullet wounds, has been made public on the orders of Lahore High Court after three-and-a-half-years. And it appears to confirm his claim that the firing took place at the behest of the highest provincial authorities. Second, and more importantly, it is election time. Almost all major opposition parties have rallied to PAT's side, promising full support to its protest plan.

Conscious of the odds, Qadri is taking one step at a time. The first step was to give a deadline, January 7, for the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and his close confidante, Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, to resign. Of course, no one expected that to happen on opposition parties' demand. Or out of moral responsibly, in which case at least one of them should have stepped down soon after so many people were killed by police on their watch. Instead, the response has been to shift the blame to the victims' side, and rewarding of senior police and administration officials suspected of having played a role in the bloody incident with cushy jobs; only some junior level policemen face legal proceedings. Moral responsibility is a concept alien to rulers in this pretend democracy.

The next course of action, decided by a seven-member steering committee comprising representatives of various opposition parties - the PPP, PTI, Jamaat-e-Islami, PML-Q, Awami Muslims League, Majilis-e-Wahdat-ul-Muslimeen and PAT - is to launch on January 17 a countrywide movement to "end all PML-N governments and decimate it as a party." A tall order, indeed. But there is no doubting that they have a seriousness of purpose in taking up the issue of unprovoked killings as it resonates with the public. General elections are round the corner. The issue, alongside a likely adverse verdict for the Sharif family in the ongoing corruption cases can help them drag the Nawaz League - already reeling from its legal setbacks - in the mud at a crucial time.

Although the multiparty steering committee did not spell out any plan for its protest movement, its announcement of 'countrywide protests' suggests the participants are to hold demonstrations in their respective areas of strength. It is unclear though if the strategy is to keep the pot boiling till election time, or to make the protests really decisive through disruptive street agitation and choking of highways in order to bring the national life to a standstill. In that case the PML-N governments at the Centre and in Punjab would be in deep trouble.

Also gaining strength are reports that an important motive behind the protest plan is to stop the Senate elections come March, when the Nawaz League is poised to gain majority in the upper house. That cannot be prevented as long as the electoral college, provincial and national assemblies, is intact. After Nawaz League's debacle in Baluchistan, the fate of that assembly hangs in the balance. If the chattering classes are to be trusted, for the furtherance of their single-point agenda of ousting the PML-N governments, the PTI ruling in KP and the PPP in Sindh are willing to dissolve their respective assemblies. (That seems rather unlikely. Reason suggests both parties would want to use the last four months in office to win over votes with various public welfare schemes.) Further goes the argument, the purported action by the two provincial governments would embolden the PML-N dissidents to tender their resignations from the National Assembly. Thus Qadri and company can have their wish to "end all PML-N governments and decimate it as a party."

If that is the plan, it is not without pitfalls. None of the major opposition parties involved in the protest movement would like to see such a scenario lead to unforeseen consequences. Delay in elections under any pretext is not in their interest. Even if they succeed in ousting the PML-N governments ahead of May, when their term ends, they will have to contend with serious problems. As it is, elections cannot be held before schedule since the Election Commission needs time for demarcation of new constituencies in the light of the latest national census results. And as per the Constitution, caretaker governments, meant to ensure neutrality in elections, have only 90-day tenure. The caretakers will have to stay for a longer period. It may be possible to get an extension from the Supreme Court in view of the election commission's constraints, but that could generate new controversies.

Be that as it may, the opposition parties' game plan may only be to hurt the Nawaz League rather than to seek its early departure. As the PPP leader Qamar Zaman Qaira said in a TV discussion, while Nawaz Sharif is attacking the judiciary to put under pressure the accountability court hearing the corruption references against him and his family, the opposition movement will ease that pressure. In other words, the end game is not to disturb the political process. It is just some messy politics.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2018