ISLAMABAD: The ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has never held any in-house consultations on the issue of handling the opposition’s anti-government protests and the matter is being dealt directly by Prime Minister Imran Khan and some of his close associates, background interviews with some senior PTI leaders, including cabinet members, revealed on Friday.

According to some ministers, the issue also never came under proper discussion during meetings of the federal cabinet since the formal launching of the anti-government campaign by the 11-party Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) with their public meeting in Gujranwala on Oct 16, though it got some occasional mentions in a couple of meetings.

They said the matter did come under discussion in some meetings of the party’s media managers, but the discussions remained confined to the strategy to respond to the opposition’s allegations and tirade through the media.

And now there is a general feeling among those in the PTI who were in favour of engaging the opposition politically that the government has lost the opportunity and now it is too late for them to make such an offer to the opposition.

“Yes, you are right. There has been no meeting of the party’s central executive committee (CEC) or the core committee of the party on the issue,” said a senior federal minister, when reminded of the fact that no meeting of the party’s decision-making forums had been held since the PDM’s multiparty conference (MPC) in Islamabad on September 20 in which the opposition parties had announced their decision to launch a three-phased anti-government movement under an “action plan” starting with countrywide public meetings, protest demonstrations and rallies before a “decisive long march” towards Islamabad in January 2021.

The opposition leaders had announced that they would use all political and democratic options, including no-confidence motions and en masse resignations from the parliament to seek “the selected prime minister’s resignation and an end to the role of the establishment in politics”.

The first phase of the PDM’s movement will be over with the public meeting in Lahore on Dec 13 and the alliance’s leadership has already directed its lawmakers in the national and the provincial assemblies to hand over their resignations to respective heads of the constituent parties by Dec 31 which could be submitted at the time of starting the long march towards Islamabad.

At present, the government has been facing criticism from various sections of society and media over its confused decision of not giving permission to the PDM to hold the public meeting in Lahore on the one hand and announcing that it would not prevent the opposition parties either from doing so, and register cases against them as well as the facilitators of the event.

When asked at which forum this decision had been made, the minister simply replied perhaps it was the government of Punjab which was making decisions. He said that since the law and order was a provincial subject, therefore, the matter of handling the PDM rallies and events had been left on the provincial governments.

The PTI leaders admitted that there was a “strong group” within the party which wanted the government to engage the opposition as any situation leading to chaos in the country would be harmful only for the government and not the opposition which had nothing at stake.

“There is no thinking at all in the party,” said a disappointed minister when asked as to what thinking was going on within the party ranks over the handling of the PDM protests.

The minister, who was once very active in criticising the opposition and defending every action of the government, in a very meaningful way, said: “It seems we have decided to leave the matter to be handled by those who are being directly targeted by opposition parties in their public meetings”.

In reply to a question, he agreed that there was a group within the PTI which believed that the party should demonstrate political maturity and engage the opposition politically. When asked to identify those in favour of political engagement, he named a number of senior party leaders, including Defence Minister Pervez Khattak and he himself.

Another senior PTI member said that he was previously in favour of talks with the opposition, but now he believed that it was too late. He said making a direct offer to the opposition for talks at this stage would now be seen as a retreat on the part of the government and a victory for opposition parties.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2020