LAHORE: The multiparty conference under Dr Tahirul Qadri on Monday decided to launch a countrywide protest movement from Jan 17 to “end all PML-N governments and decimate it as a party”.

Briefing the media at the end of hours-long meeting of the steering committee, Dr Qadri, chief of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), said that with the expiry of the deadline for resignations (on Jan 7), demands had also changed. “All PML-N governments, wherever they are, will have to go now,” he declared.

The PAT chief denied that he had forgotten the original demand of “justice for Model Town victims” and tried to dispel the impression that he was now embarking on a political movement.

“The nucleus of the movement remains the same, but it cannot be delinked from other cells. The MPC is now going after all factors that produced the environment that enabled them to perpetrate the catastrophe and it includes the PML-N as a party as well,” he explained.

Dr Qadri said a seven-member action committee had been formed to finalise arrangements for the protest movement. “The committee would oversee the movement as it unfolds after Wednesday next and decide what is required, and when, to sustain the movement,” he added.

PAT chief claims all PML-N govts will have to go

The committee includes Qamaruz Zaman Kaira from the Pakistan Peoples Party, Aleem Khan from the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Kamil Ali Agha of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, Sheikh Rashid from his Awami Muslim League, Khurram Nawaz Gandapur of the PAT, Nasir Sherazi from Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen and Liaquat Baloch from Jamaat-i-Islami.

Though the PAT chief waxed rhetorical, his announcement of the protest movement with no clear strategy did prompt questions from the media. Didn’t he think he had lost his way as he was unable to come up with any clear action plan even after the expiry of a second deadline, a reporter asked him.

“That is a totally wrong perception,” Dr Qadri shot back.

“The earlier deadline was unilateral and only the PAT owned it. The next deadline — which ended on Jan 7 — was given by all the parties (gathered at PAT’s call). At the expiry of this deadline, we have announced a protest movement. There was consensus in the meeting that it was time not to ask for resignation but to force resignation out of them. We are right on track and everyone would realise the intensity of movement as it unfolds.”

All party heads, including Asif Ali Zardari and Imran Khan, have been invited to the first day of the protest movement. All of them would hopefully be there to kick-start the movement, the PAT chief said.

The party insiders, however, explain the absence of a action plan from the announcement. “The PAT is scared to get trapped in another sit-in situation — not because it lacks financial and human muscle to hold and sustain it, but because of the difficulty of getting out of it once it is held. In the last sit-in, the party had to wind it up as the expenses shot beyond Rs10 million a day — political embarrassment was in addition to those expenses. That is precisely why the PAT first shifted the responsibility to other parties for a cause that was purely its own. Now, the party is trying to keep the burden on other parties and the latest decision reflects the same,” they said.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2018