No focus on elections, only on cutting PTI down to size

For the short- and medium-term, the focus in Pakistan of its PDM government and more so of its establishment, seems to be cut down the PTI to size. Well over a 150 former legislators and members of Parliament have already left the party, and ‘press conferences’ are being held on a daily basis where further defections are announced.

Having said that, those who are saying that there’s undeclared martial law in Pakistan or that this is the worst kind of state oppression that the country has seen in its history are obviously unaware (possibly by design) of how dissent and the media were treated in Pakistan during, say, General Zia’s rule in the 1980s. Of course that is not to say that what is happening right now is right and should not be done, but the point here is to address all those who claim that something like this has never happened before, since such a claim is tantamount to disinformation and serves the narrative of one partisan political entity and individual.

The objective right now is to prevent Imran Khan and his PTI from contesting the next election, whenever that happens. It is also to cobble together a King’s Party, and the main claimant for doing that seems to be Jehangir Tareen. In recent days, we have also seen several PTI leaders and legislators switch to the PPP and this is likely to continue in the coming days.

The long-term aim is to have no single party in control of the government and make them all dependent on each other, and also making it easier for them to be controlled by an outside force.

Of course, the ideal way forward for all political parties would be to join hands together and work towards something like a charter of democracy whereby all of them work together to keep non-democratic forces out of politics. But that is very unlikely because there’s a great deal of mistrust between the PDM parties and the PTI and because Imran Khan himself remains the biggest stumbling block towards such a goal.