ISLAMABAD: Notwith­stan­ding mounting pressure both from within the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and outside, its chairman believes ‘this is his moment’ and his party must carry on with its Azadi march until Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns.

According to party insiders and analysts, PTI leaders have had a heated debate over the past couple of days on whether to stick to their main demand of the prime minister’s resignation or show some flexibility and try to find a middle ground in talks with the government.

During the party’s core committee meeting held on Friday evening on top of Imran Khan’s custom-made container at the D-Chowk, some leaders aggressively argued in favour of a negotiable deal with the government and getting the maximum by dropping the main demand lower in the order, Dawn has learnt from PTI sources.

In minority though, ones who favoured talks asserted that in case the Azadi march failed, the PTI would be isolated and might lose its voting strength which the party had only established in the last general elections, the sources said.

“If we keep on hitting out at every political party sitting in the Parliament House or outside, who will support us if tomorrow the PTI needs allies,” a member of the committee was quoted as arguing during the meeting. The PTI chief over the past few days has lambasted every politician who has supported the PML-N. But all the main parties sitting on the treasury and opposition benches appear to have agreed to make the resignation of the prime minister conditional to findings of a judicial commission the government has agreed to set up.

The government’s negotiators in their meeting with the PTI on Saturday also agreed to all its demands except the resignation.

But Mr Khan, according to his party’s leaders and others who have met him in his container, holds a deep conviction that he has brought this movement to a level from where he can only move forward, putting more pressure on the prime minister to resign. “I know I will get him out of power,” he was quoted as saying when a visitor confronted him with the fact that all other political parties and both houses of parliament were standing with the government.

Mr Khan believes, contrary to many in his own party, that if the prime minister doesn’t resign and accept the PTI’s demands, more people will join him both at the national and international levels.

A party leader conceded that he and his colleagues had no other option but to follow their leader and that the matters had entered a phase where they were left with little space even to differ with their leadership.

About a widely held perception that both Mr Khan and Pakistan Awami Tehreek chief Dr Tahirul Qadri were going ahead with their marches on a cue from powers that be, PTI sources said the only message their chairman had received from the General Headquarters was that he should control his crowd and stop it from confronting the law-enforcement agencies.

After the government invoked Article 245, troops are looking after the security of Islamabad.

When Dr Qadri and Mr Khan moved towards the D-Chowk last week and the latter threatened to march on the Prime Minister House, the ISPR issued a warning against storming the buildings representing state authority.

The sources confirmed the rumours of the PTI chief’s backchannel contact with Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, but refused to comment when asked if something was cooking up between the two.

The media is rife with speculations that not only are the two leaders in touch with each other, but the PTI chief has also proposed Chaudhry Nisar’s name as prime minister after an in-house change -- a face-saving formula both for the protesting party and the government.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2014