By Sardar Khan Niazi
The Supreme Court has dismissed the petition of the former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association Kamran Murtaza to stop the PTI long march, as ineffective.
Justice Ayesha Malik asked the petitioner why the intervention of the court was required only in the long march of a particular political party. Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial said the Long March is a political issue that can be solved politically.
It is worth noting here that despite a crack within the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of opposition parties, it held massive rallies in major cities and intended to hold more to seek Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ouster. It even called for early free and fair elections in the country.
PDM chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif presented the demand at a press conference. They vowed to relaunch the anti-government movement that would culminate in a march toward Islamabad.
Opposition PDM parties did not realize that Pakistan was passing through the most difficult period of its history surrounded by enemies with grave financial crises, and any such step at that stage was unwise. The PDM parties just indulged in shouting, creating hurdles, floating stories against the PTI government, and creating a ruckus in the national assembly.
As the role played by parliamentary opposition is most essential, therefore PDM parties were supposed to participate at every stage of legislation and present amendments with sound logic, and convince the government by arguing but the PDM did not follow that practice.
Unfortunately, PDM parties’ role as opposition remained confined to making personal attacks, using indecent language, boycotting, shouting, hurling abuses, throwing mikes on political rivals, and head-on fights. They interrupted while someone spoke, made noise, encircled the speaker, tore off the agenda papers, and sometimes attacked the speaker.
With no discrete plan in view, the PDM political parties got together to evolve a combined line of attack to take on the PTI government. They appeared to have no other purpose than the common goal to evade the accountability process.
They just repeated their rejection of every move of the PTI government. The PTI followers were indignant over the unceasing witch-hunting of their leader Imran Khan. They also found fault with the PTI government programs that were aiming to make the life of every segment of society better.
What the PDM parties are doing for the masses when they are enjoying governance? They used to say that ‘we want to topple the PTI government but not harm democracy. It did sound hilarious. Their move meant nothing but the promotion of a personal cause, of course, different for every PDM party.
They also kept on harping and still repeating that the elections were engineered to make Imran Khan Prime Minister. To criticize the PTI government and individual ministers on their performance and to oppose the PTI government’s actions became the habit of PDM parties.
Some of the members of PDM parties recommended extreme measures to generate a situation that could lead to a crisis, ultimately resulting in a fresh round of elections. Now when they hold power they criticize Imran’s call for early elections.
The proposal was also given that the PDM parliamentarians should tender mass resignations and that the workers of the PDM parties would lock down the federal capital. Surprisingly, they are now against the PTI Long March.
The PDM opposition parties’ unwelcome uproar never allowed them to reassess their thinking in the national interest to abandon their dogged stand against the PTI government. Economic and political uncertainty increased. Consequently, the country suffered and is still suffering from inflation, decreasing purchasing power, and energy shortages.
