Not long ago, Imran Khan was demanding the head of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif over alleged rigging in the 2013 general election. He won’t settle for anything less.

But the dynamics of domestic politics have changed since Imran marched his forces into Islamabad on August 15 to raise the demand.

Evidently, new realities at the national and international stage have forced him to water down his demand, irrespective whether it was just or unjust.

Indeed, the third time prime minister looked running scared as a hunted lion when the ‘Azadi marchers’ of Imran Khan and the ‘revolutionaries’ of Canada-based Dr Tahirul Qadri camped themselves outside the parliament building, initially waiting for a signal that would bring the change both wanted.

When the undisguised ‘umpire’ did not raise his finger, as Imran claimed he would, the obstinate in the former cricketer and the active Islamic preacher took over.

They continued their agitation, attacking the political parties and leaders who gave their shoulders to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to save “the democratic system”.

However, fatigue took over their activists and made Dr Qadri fold up his Pakistan Awami Tehrik’s sit-in first. Imran Khan continues to roar from his custom-made container in the Red Zone though to this day, for the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf daily evening show where the crowd has grown thinner like the leader’s demands.

On November 30 the PTI indeed put up a big show but the thunder was gone. There was no echo of the August demands for resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, dissolution of the National Assembly and trial of all those under Article 6 who allegedly helped PML-N win last general elections.

Instead, the nation heard PTI suing for a “telephonic assurance” from the government for meaningful negotiations so that the party could defer its call for strikes in major urban centers – and if those did not bend the government – bring the country to a halt on December 18.

Imran Khan called it PTI’s Plan C.

All would read it as an admission that his Plan A and Plan B failed, and wonder at his politics. Had not the government sent word to PTI before it set off for its Azadi March for a dialogue to address the mismanagement of last general election?

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif even wrote to the Supreme Court on August 13 to set up a judicial commission for the purpose. Talks that took place were undone on September 13 when Imran Khan refused to drop his demand for the prime minister’s resignation, as wanted by the political and military circles. His point was that election fraud cannot be probed impartially under Sharif’s command.

Later developments entirely changed the political climate and put Imran on the defensive. The military leadership did not intervene in the political crisis, even when PTI president Javed Hashmi, while resigning from the National Assembly, charged that Imran Khan had been “working hand-in-glove with the forces of establishment”.

But the military did stay government’s hand from using force to eject PTI and PAT protesters from Constitution Avenue.

Isolated in Islamabad, Imran took his lone battle to other parts of the country. That was his Plan B which won him huge crowds of disaffected youth but no political gains as such.

Now the Plan C is out, which talks about paralysing life in the industrial city of Faisalabad on December 8, commercial hub Karachi on December 12, and the once bastion of power Lahore on December 15 and whole of Pakistan on December 18.

But behind the hostile posturing, PTI is pushing for the resumption of the stalled talks.

From chairman Imran Khan to information secretary Shireen Mazari, the PTI leadership has been asking the government to return to the negotiating table.

Whether the effort represents frustration over its fruitless 100-day-old street agitation or a change of strategy, many people think Imran Khan has missed the bus. If he had accepted the opposition parties as guarantors of impartial judicial probe into his charge of election fraud, between August 20 and 30 when his protest movement was at peak, he would have achieved political maturity at least. Now, striking a deal with the more confident Nawaz Sharif will be harder as he would dictate his terms. Leaders of the ruling PML-N are already saying that election tribunals are the only legal forum open to PTI for resolving the electoral fraud issue.

PTI’s Dr Arif Alvi, however, claims that after his party dropped the demand for the prime minister’s resignation the ball is in the government’s court. “Over the past two months we have pulled off massive rallies all around the country, including the one on November 30 in Islamabad. How else a party anywhere in the world can raise its demands,” asked Irshad Ahmad, a PTI’s tehsil level office bearer, who had been a regular visitor to party’s sit-in on D-Chowk. “And we are only asking free and fair investigation to determine if our assertions regarding last general election are true,”

A palpable sense of despair has seized the party, however.

People in the party’s inner circle also are uncertain what way the movement would end.

“Ideally speaking, we would want new elections as a result of our dharna. If that’s not happening, the party should at least get the judicial commission the government had asked the Supreme Court to form, for face saving,” said a PTI MNA who didn’t want to speak on the record.

After all, Dr Qadri got the FIR of his choice registered and then a damning commission report which confirmed malfeasance on the part of the Punjab government in the killing of 14 PAT workers. “But in PTI’s case, we have nothing in our hands so far,” he added.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2014