HAVING decided that the PTI’s anti-government protests are unlikely to topple the government, the PML-N had two options.

The good option was to engage the PTI, address the party’s legitimate demands and allow the country to move on from a debilitating and long-running political crisis.

The bad option was to view survival as an opportunity to exert more pressure on the PTI and disrupt the anti-government protest.

Also read: Govt looking to frustrate PTI’s Nov 30 show

A report in this newspaper yesterday suggests that the PML-N has chosen the latter option, ie the PML-N leadership is developing a strategy to disrupt the PTI’s planned Nov 30 rally in Islamabad.

In a staggering display of misplaced priorities, government circles appear obsessed with what the PTI is doing rather than governance issues.

Some concerns of the government are legitimate enough. A large crowd in Islamabad near parliament can be a security risk, especially if the PTI leadership riles up the protesters, as happened on Aug 30 and Sept 1.

Moreover, the possibility of a terrorist attack, either on the crowd or using the crowd as cover to break into buildings housing state institutions, is ever present. Yet, many of those risks could be reduced with professionally managed, lawful crowd-control tactics by law-enforcement agencies and pre-rally consultations with the PTI.

After all, the PTI has held many such rallies in various parts of the country already. And, ultimately, the government has a twofold responsibility here: to ensure the safety and security of the protesters as well as the protection of state institutions. Yet, it appears that political calculations and personal grudges are characterising much of what the government does on the PTI front.

To be sure, part of the problem is Imran Khan and the PTI. The endless protests rather than accepting that democratic change ought to be channelled through parliament along with the overheated rhetoric aimed at the government has created an environment in which rational debate has become difficult.

But it is the PML-N that is in power and, being the chief custodian of the democratic process, it is the PML-N that has to demonstrate the calmness and magnanimity necessary to produce democratic breakthroughs when dealing with protests against the government or even the system.

What those breakthroughs could be are well known by now and repeated many times — robust and meaningful electoral reforms legislated by parliament and an independent and powerful commission to inquire into allegations of fraud during the May 2013 election.

That is where the focus of the government ought to rightly lie. Unhappily, from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif downwards, the PML-N leadership keeps being swayed by the logic of the hawks.

Effectively though, the government has three years left in office — why not spend that time focusing on governance rather than the politics of protest and what needs to be done to crush a political rival?

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2014