PRIME Minister Nawaz Sharif betrays a mindset frozen in time when he says he doesn’t understand why people protest against him or seek his removal at a time when he is just warming up in his third term of being in power. Whether PTI will be able to acquire power to rule Pakistan or deliver the change it talks about is one thing. Whether it will be able to bring Sharif down through its incessant fulmination is another. “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” Victor Hugo said. Unfortunately for Nawaz, “Go Nawaz Go” is sticking.

Triggers for mass uprisings can never be predicted with scientific precision. Did all of France rise up in arms when the French Revolution transpired? Didn’t the collective American conscience accept the notion of ‘separate and equal’ in Plessy vs Ferguson (1896) only to reject it six decades later after Brown v Board of Education declared it unconstitutional? Does the US remember minority rights activists who came before Martin Luther King as fondly? Was Musharraf ousted and were judges restored because all of Pakistan — urban and rural — rose up for rule of law?

Those who believe that PTI’s agitation doesn’t seriously threaten Sharif’s regime because it is an urban phenomenon don’t appreciate that all mass uprisings are largely urban phenomena. Agitation-based change is no referendum. The ‘yes’ vote lost the referendum in Scotland. But while 45pc pro-independence Scots might be unable to form government, they sure can destroy a government that is formed if they insist on doing so. In other words, the numbers needed to destroy governments are always less than the ones needed to construct it.

Second, in protests, the intensity of commitment matters almost as much as the numbers. PPP created and cultivated the hyper-dedicated jiyala (who was unconditionally bound to Bhutto and Bhuttoism) in the late ’60s and ’70s that the party could rely on even in hard times. Their number has decreased over the years and the intensity of their commitment has now waned. PML-N, the other mainstream party, has never had this category of fervent followers devoted unconditionally to party ideology (or charisma?) of the top leadership.

Nawaz Sharif doesn’t seem to understand the sentiment that the PTI is riding on.

PTI is the new mainstream party that has created zealots just like PPP did back in the day. It is the fervour of its zealots combined with the resonance of Khan’s message with the average Pakistani craving change that accounts for people thronging to PTI assemblies. How Pakistanis vote in an election notwithstanding, to think that PML-N or PPP can beat Khan at pulling crowds in 2014 is folly. What PPP/PML-N lack and what the PTI chief has are three things: intensity of core support, a rotting system Imran claims to be an outsider to and benefit of doubt.

Sharif doesn’t seem to understand the sentiment that PTI is riding on. One, while PML-N might not be guilty of causing all the failings evident in Pakistan today that Imran Khan keeps highlighting, the narrative woven by him and being bought by ordinary folks holds Sharif and other entrenched political players responsible for being abettors and beneficiaries of a broken system they are loath to fix. Khan has largely succeeded (with the aid of unpleasant harangue) in turning Sharif into a symbol epitomising the collective failings of Pakistan over the last 68 years.

Two, PTI might not have a credible plan to deliver the change it is promising, but people would rather be fooled by someone new than by the same folks again and again.

Three, many cautious supporters of PTI understand that Pakistan’s problems are multifarious and won’t be resolved with the ouster of Sharif. But even when people know they can’t get justice or have their problems solved instantly, they want catharsis. ‘Go Nawaz Go’ is providing cathartic relief to ordinary folks in the face of the miseries they experience on an everyday basis due to state failure.

Four, so long as PTI-PAT calls for immediate removal of Sharif seemed backed by hidden hands, many saw the confrontation from a civil-military lens. That cultivated sympathy for Sharif. Once the opportunity for military intervention (during the violent stand-off on Constitutional Avenue) emerged and passed, a sense grew that even if scriptwriters had encouraged the march as a plan to oust Sharif through the threat of khaki intervention, the plan has been shelved for now. Devoid of the civil-military lens, Sharif and his style of governance inspire little sympathy.

In other words, many wanted to prop up Sharif so long as he appeared to be the victim of undemocratic forces threatening the continuity of the constitutional order. But take the khakis out of the equation and the playing field seems tilted in favour of the incumbent Sharif, with his control over state machinery, resources and means of patronage and against the challenger Khan. Gathering hordes outside parliament and Prime Minister House was certainly not Pakistan’s finest democratic moment. But hidden hands can’t manufacture the multitudes hankering for rights, coming out to PTI jalsas in Karachi, Lahore and Mianwali.

PML-N seems oblivious to the angst and anger shared by ordinary Pakistanis at how Pakistan functions. Its response, that this is how things have always been, now seems callous. What we are witnessing is the tipping point of public disdain for our power elites’ abrasive and arrogant sense of entitlement. Khan might be focused on the unjust enrichment and indiscretions of our political elite sans PTI. But it is only a matter of time that public attention turns to others as well: the power, pelf, protocol and profligacy of all elites — generals, judges, babus et al.

Imran Khan isn’t about to stop adding fuel to the fire of public resentment. The khakis aren’t about to intervene, the judges aren’t about to induce regime change and Nawaz Sharif isn’t about to resign. Thus we are gridlocked. But what is worst is that when PML-N isn’t acting like all this will blow over without consequence, it is sulking over being asked to behave like fiduciaries of public authority handed to them as a trust. Growing public disquiet and a government living in its cocoon is unsustainable. Something’s gotta give.

The writer is a lawyer.

sattar@post.harvard.edu

Twitter: @babar_sattar

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2014