ONCE a party is in protest mode, issues follow. The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) example illustrates that the protest also hides and overwhelms some aspects that could have otherwise attracted scrutiny and criticism.

In India recently, Imran Khan, arguably the second most popular Pakistani politician after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, showed his preference for a secret dialogue on Kashmir. “Secret talks are the best bet,” he was quoted as saying, “because otherwise there are vested interests on both sides to subvert them.”

Had it been an occasional remark by a politician not as active as Imran is these days this Kashmir statement would have had the potential of kicking up a heated debate.

What does a secret dialogue mean, and does Imran think there are only two sides to the dispute? What about the third side, the Kashmiris? Did the PTI chief think the parleys he was suggesting had any room for sneaking in a Kashmiri or two just for lending them some precautionary universality?

Maybe Maulana Fazlur Rehman who has been reappointed as the Pakistani parliament’s famed Kashmir Committee chairman would want to ask these questions of Imran Khan. It is one thing to be having these parleys, but they have to be couched in proper diplomatic language, at a distance from the Imran series of simplistic, loudly proposed solutions.

The Insafians want to keep it simple. Drones, poll rigging and price hike, the PTI’s choice of issues to agitate on and their equally simple method of protest are close to the hearts of a large number of Pakistanis. The biases of the people here are also reflected in the popular reactions and routine conversations post-Imran Khan’s visit to India.

In comparison to the reported suggestion on Kashmir, there were quite a few hopeful voices probing the viability of a civilian nuclear cooperation which the PTI chief spoke about in India — no matter how impractical the idea may sound to experts.

Imran Khan has got his list right, even if so many would wish he had greater depth and so many others are keen to pull him down for his ‘shallowness’.

The sit-in against the drones in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa led to a familiar scene where the PTI was not just reprimanded as the uninitiated child of Pakistani politics, it was also widely ridiculed. The criticism this time was on an even larger scale than previously. At one point during the drone dharna the empty chairs in the PTI sit-in camp were flashed in the media to bring out lack of interest.

A few days later, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel came over to reconfirm just how effective the sit-in had turned out to be. The PTI’s simple, ‘crude’ method had succeeded. Islamabad under the charge of Nawaz Sharif had been clearly told to ensure open routes or risk delay in the much-needed aid from the US.

The government in Islamabad had so far limited themselves to reminding the PTI of the disservice it was doing to the country. Now it had to find a way to engage Imran Khan in an effort to find a way through for the Nato supplies.

Against a PML-N so renowned for taking high moral positions, the PTI politicians cannot be faulted for thinking that this places them at a vantage point. As does all this controversy surrounding the allegations of rigging in the May general elections.

By a conspiracy of various factors the PTI has been made to look like a party which is being denied a simple, reasonable request. All it wants is a rechecking of the voters’ thumb impressions on not all but a few constituencies. But all it has got so far are delays in legal proceedings to meets its demand and some customarily loud non-explanations from the other side.

Of late, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the interior minister, has added an element of desperation to the government’s answer to the calls for the thumb impression affair.

Quite in the mould of the previous government which pleaded it be allowed to rule in the name of strengthening democracy, and not simply as a consequence of a right given to it by the electorate, Chaudhry Nisar last week asked for a show of sagacity from politicians to avoid bringing the whole of the May elections into disrepute.

In an Assembly session closely following the attempted sacking of National Database and Registration Authority head Tariq Malik, Chaudhry Nisar had this to say: “I am taking this opportunity to ask you to give your considered opinion for the future course in this regard [rigging allegations] in a manner which is not prejudicial to the sanctity of the entire electoral process or the democratic institutions….”

This was again a PTI gain. If anything, both the interior minister’s tone and his content emboldened Imran Khan.

Two days after Chaudhry Nisar’s speech, the PTI chief warned the government against “creating hurdles” in the way of vote verification and threatened it with a mass protest. “I will talk to all like-minded parties and politicians, including Dr Tahirul Qadri, to move the masses against the government,” Imran said.

By drawing upon Dr Qadri’s image of a leader with a proven ability to gather a sizeable number of troops for the march towards correcting the system Imran hinted he was less simple in his approach than he generally appeared to the analysts.

The suspension of the Nato supply and the vote verification issue do create problems for the federal government just when a local bodies election is around the corner. And then there is a big anti-inflation protest the PTI plans to launch later this month. The PTI is hoping to put up a large enough show in Lahore on Dec 22 and would want to carry the anti-PML-N mood into its campaign for the local government polls. Successful or otherwise, unlike some of the others, it will not be blamed for a lack of effort. It is undergoing the right exercises in an effort to make a fight of it.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.