Islamabad lacks Tahrir Square
focus By Syed Fazl-e-Haider
KARACHI - Islamabad virtually turned into
another Tahrir Square late on Monday, as tens of
thousands of Pakistani protesters, chanting reform
slogans swept into Islamabad after a 36-hour long
march from the eastern city of Lahore. Their
leader, Dr Tahirul Qadri, a cleric who heads the
Islamic charity Tehrik-i-Minhajul Quran, demanded
that the Pakistani authorities dissolve the
national assembly and all four provincial
assemblies by the following morning.
"The
march has ended and the revolution has begun now.
We have entered the age of change", Qadri
announced in an address as marchers rallied in
Islamabad.
Qadri gave the government a
five-minute ultimatum to agree to move the stage
to D-Chowk, in front of Parliament House. The
government was forced to
accept his demand to avoid a clash after thousands
of marchers started removing all hurdles on the
way to the assembly building.
Under a deal
between the Islamabad administration and Qadri,
protesters would stage a sit-in at Jinnah Avenue,
but Qadri instead asked marchers to move toward
D-Chowk. The highly sensitive and heavily guarded
area is the location for the diplomatic enclave,
Parliament House, the official residencies of the
president and the prime minister, and Pakistan's
Supreme Court. It is also Qadri's choice for
planting the spirit of Tahrir Square, the focal
point in Cairo for the revolution that overthrew
the Egyptian regime in 2011.
Sit-ins
staged by Shi'ite leaders across the country over
the targeted killings of the Hazara community in
the southwestern city of Quetta forced the federal
government on Monday to dismiss the Balochistan
government of chief minister Aslam Raisani and to
impose governor rule in the province. The demands
for change come as the Pakistan People's Party
central government is set to be the first
administration to complete a five-year term in
March.
Two days before marching on
Islamabad, Qadri, a Pakistani-Canadian, called for
the dissolution of the Election Commission of
Pakistan and the formation of a new impartial
commission. By aiming to convert Islamabad's
administrative area into another Tahrir Square,
Qadri is positioning himself to bring revolution
to Pakistan on an Egyptian model.
While
addressing a huge gathering of a half-million
people in Lahore on his arrival from Canada on
December 23, the charismatic Qadri had given the
government a January 10 deadline to place a clean
and trustworthy caretaker set-up in consultation
with the military, judiciary and other
stakeholders to carry out reforms and to
ruthlessly impose accountability of the corrupt
ruling elite.
He also announced his
intention to launch the long march and to turn
Islamabad into a Tahrir Square until his demands
are met in letter and spirit.
"We will
stay in Islamabad until this government is
finished, all the assemblies are dissolved, all
corrupt people are totally ousted, a just
constitution is imposed, rule of law is enforced,
and true and real democracy is enforced," AFP
reported Qadri as saying.
Like Egypt,
surging inflation and poverty levels are fueling
unrest in Pakistan. Unlike Egypt, Pakistan has an
elected parliament, an elected government, an
independent media and a powerful judiciary. If
Qadri wants Islamabad to become another Tahrir
Square, as happened in Egypt against authoritarian
rule of Hosni Mubarak, he overlooks the fact that
there is no figure in the shape of former
president Hosni Mubarak to rail against.
Is Pakistan really ripe for a similar set
of events that convulsed Egypt in 2011? Can
corruption, bad governance, surging poverty levels
and soaring commodity prices lead to a spontaneous
outburst of the peoples' anger against the
unpopular government, whose tenure expires in
three months?
"Our agenda is just
democratic electoral reforms," Qadri was reported
as saying by Reuters. "We don't want the
law-breakers to become our lawmakers."
Qadri's long march fueled conspiracy
theories in the country ahead of general
elections, which are set to be held before June.
His critics say that he is being backed and used
by the country's powerful military establishment
as a proxy to delay the polls and derail
democracy. The military wants to place a selected
interim government for at least two years, a model
previously in place in Bangladesh.
The
interim set-up will include technocrats who would
be tasked with reforming the system of governance
and putting the country's ailing economy on track.
Pakistan's political history debunks the
likelihood of such adventures and experiments by
the military proving to be a success; previously
they have been a disaster for the country.
Daily Times, the country's leading
newspaper recently commented,
"While Dr Qadri has gone to some
lengths to reject any suggestion that he is
being instigated or supported by any secret
agency or the establishment, most observers are
suspicious of the closeness of Dr Qadri's
ostensible agenda and the rumored toying by the
establishment with the idea of postponing if not
canceling the elections in favor of a selected
interim setup of uncertain duration (the
Bangladeshi model modified to our peculiar
circumstances?). Needless to say, based on our
history, such an adventure would be an
unmitigated disaster."
At present,
there is no authoritarian rule in Pakistan as
there was in Egypt when the Tahrir Square protests
forced president Mubarak to leave office, while in
1999, Qadri supported the military set-up of
General Pervez Musharraf and won a parliamentary
seat in the rigged elections of 2002. Critics call
the Qadri agenda as "derailment of democracy" in a
country where the army has ruled for more than
half of its history.
The country's
security and foreign policies are dominated by the
military and it has been suicidal for any civilian
government to defy the security establishment by
taking a different line on an issue related to
foreign policy or national security.
What
will be the consequences of turning Islamabad into
another Tahrir Square? Pakistan may plunge into
deep political crisis.
The prospect of
political anarchy in this nuclear-armed country
bordering Afghanistan and having strongholds of
Taliban militants fuels international concerns. It
could be a big setback for the United States-led
war on Islamist extremists at a time when the
Afghan war endgame is set to begin.
Syed Fazl-e-Haider (
www.syedfazlehaider.com ) is a development analyst
in Pakistan. He is the author of many books,
including The Economic Development of
Balochistan, published in May 2004. E-mail
sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com
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