The administration cracked down as strongly as before, but there was not the same paralysis of daily life as before. On the showing of Tuesday’s protests, the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf cannot be ruled out as a political force, but it seems to have lost the keen edge to its protests that made the PML(N) describe it as a destabilising force. However, the real government reply was not so much the use of force to suppress the protests (though there were hundreds of arrests made) as the disqualification of a Senator, three MNAs and three MPAs by the Election Commission of Pakistan on the ground of their conviction by an anti-terrorism court of being guilty of involvement in the 9 Mat 2023 riots. Those unseated included the Leaders of the Opposition in both the National Assembly and Senate. The Leader of Opposition in the Punjab Assembly has also been disqualified as a result of conviction in an earlier case. To top it all, Information Secretary Waqas Akram may be unseated for not attending the National Assembly, with his applications for leave being rejected.
The PPTI is in trouble, and may well be facing its biggest crisis since the events of 9 May 2023, when the party lost a number of senior leaders. At that time, the party only temporarily achieved its purpose of getting party chief Imran Khan released, with his subsequent arrest t on 5 August 2023 a relatively tame affair. The second anniversary of his incarceration was supposed to have seen the launch of a movement for his release, but the show on Tuesday was not that. Though it showed that the PTI continues to exist, it also shows that it does not have the energy, or perhaps even ability, to work up enough disruption to force Mr Khan’s release.
The PTI has shown that it is essentially an electoral party, not an agitational, in the sense that it has not launched any successful agitations, but has been electorally successful, to the extent that being deprived of its symbol was able not just to win a substantial number of seats, but also to hold together its parliamentary parties. The unseating of so many members should provide an opportunity for it to test its muscle once again. The PML(N) should not get its hopes up, for none of the disqualified MNAs has a majority of less than 55,000 votes, and unless there has been a sudden change of public opinion, the best it can hope for is to reduce those majorities.
