Islamabad prepares for anti-government rally

Islamabad: Pakistan is bracing itself for massive street protests in the capital, Islamabad, this week amid political crisis that has seen cities’ petrol supplies cut, clashes between police and the followers of a controversial cleric in Lahore, and demands by politician and former cricketer Imran Khan for the government to quit.

The chaos and political uncertainly comes a little more than a year after a landslide election victory swept Nawaz Sharif, a conservative businessman, to power for the third time.

Sharif’s thumping parliamentary majority sparked a rare outbreak of optimism among Pakistan watchers who dared to hope the new prime minister had the mandate to achieve his aims of reviving a broken economy, making peace with India and tackling Islamist militancy.

But in the 14 months since he took office, Sharif’s authority has been undermined by Pakistan’s powerful military, Canada-based cleric Tahirul Qadri and Khan — a demagogue politician who claims Sharif’s faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) rigged the election.

Khan has vowed to bring Islamabad to a standstill on Thursday, the county’s independence day, when huge numbers of his supporters will flood into the capital. He has vowed that they will remain until the government steps down and fresh elections are called.

Khan’s antics have baffled many analysts and diplomats who are unconvinced the election was so flawed that Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was denied victory. Most international observers judged the 2013 polls to have been considerably better than previous general elections.

“We didn’t reject the election results immediately because we thought we could get relief from the courts,” said senior PTI leader Shafqat Mahmoud. “But now we have decided that everything we tried in parliament and the courts has not worked and so we have no recourse but to launch a huge protest.”

Sceptical observers also point out Khan has no way to legally achieve his aims given the government has a massive majority in parliament and is unlikely to vote itself out of existence.

Nonetheless, the prospect of Khan’s so-called “Freedom March” (in reality, a motorised drive) from Lahore to Islamabad on Thursday, has seriously alarmed the government.

Drastic steps have been taken to try and block the protest, including declaring a ban on gatherings of more than four people and giving the army responsibility for guarding Islamabad.

Other methods include the impounding of motorbikes and buses, and the closure of petrol stations. The motorway linking Islamabad to Lahore is also likely to be shut down.

Critics say the government has mishandled the situation and should have allowed demonstrations to peter out during the sweltering monsoon conditions.

But the government fears the presence of tens of thousands protesters in the normally secluded capital could trigger violent confrontations. That could create an opening for the army, which has seized power at several points in Pakistan’s history, to intervene.

Qadri enjoys the support of huge numbers of committed activists through his political party, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) and his religious organisation, the Minhaj-ul-Quran. He has long called for revolution, claiming Pakistan’s democratic structure is mired in corruption and must be swept away.

Although based for much of the time in Canada, he flew into Pakistan in June, only for the government to divert his commercial flight to Lahore to prevent him landing in Islamabad where his supporters were waiting for him.

In recent days his supporters have clashed with police near his office in an upmarket neighbourhood of Lahore where the city’s authorities had attempted to stop activists commemorating the killing in June of 14 party workers during an earlier standoff with police.

Qadri has promised his “Green Revolution” will see the immediate incarceration of government ministers and the introduction of a “10-point revolutionary agenda”.

Although Qadri has predicted the government will fall before end of August it is not yet clear whether he will join forces with Khan.

On Sunday the police charged Qadri with murder, incitement to violence and treason after a police constable who was wounded in confrontations in Lahore on Friday died.