On A Long March To Nowhere

Imprisoned for refusing to pay poll tax for the Mexican-American War, Henry David Thoreau, in his essay Resistance to Civil Government says: All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Thoreau’s work today is considered foundational in providing the ideological basis for almost all revolutions over the past century. Leo Tolstoy, famous for his letters advocating non-violence, cites Thoreau’s work as the grounds for non-violent struggle.  Civil disobedience as a means of protest has been successfully used to force the government into acquiescence. From the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Singing Revolution in the Baltics, to Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaign in South Africa to Nelson Mandela’s movement against apartheid. Civil disobedience as a form of protest cuts at the very heart of a government – by refusing to fulfill the duties of a law abiding citizen, the protester relinquishes any responsibility or acceptance of the government. It registers the citizen’s protest and in most cases the citizen is dealt with the way Thoreau was when he refused to pay poll tax – through imprisonment. But when the ranks of protesters swell, when more and more people surrender the social contract and refuse to acknowledge the government’s right to override their collective consciousness is when the government is brought to its knees.

When the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf convoy set out to shake things up in the capital, most of them truly believed that they were going to bring the government down with righteous and moral indignation against election rigging that took place on May 11, 2013. However, the convoy couldn’t boast the same numbers as their revolutionary counterpart, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek – imbued with the feeling of divine retribution against the violence against their fellow workers in the June 17 police operation – did. The rest of the 1.8 billion citizens of Pakistan felt relieved that this would all soon be over.

But then something strange happened that could have stopped the PTI in its tracks enroute to the long march – the government acquiesced. By announcing a judicial inquiry to probe rigging allegations, the government swept the carpet from under this party that had by now spent millions of rupees on its campaigns that had culminated in a camp at Zaman Park.

As PTI lawyer Ahsan Awais explained to the Lahore High Court a day before the march was to be carried out: It wasn’t enough that the government had given into their demands, all the preparations were complete and calling off the march at this junction would be a terrible blow to the party’s morale.

The government tried its best to stave off the protest, from cordoning off Model Town to playing PTI’s ally in KP against it, the government had its political tracks covered. What it wasn’t prepared for was Imran Khan’s call for civil disobedience.

The Kaptaan’s Sunday evening speech gave pause to many who had thus far maintained a neutral stance on the long march race.

Before his speech had even ended, Twitter was abuzz with talk of what Khan’s civil disobedience movement would entail.

Khan urged citizens to stop paying their bills and the business community to not pay their taxes. While these indeed are modes of civil disobedience, Khan seems to have missed the heart of what Thoreau meant when he urged people to regain their conscience and take direct action against an oppressive regime.

Khan bases his call on the need to deny the government flow of funds that he said are misappropriated and used for corrupt ends. Once the government is denied its cache of funds, it would eventually be brought to its knees begging for bounty from the populace.

But Khan doesn’t seek reform within the government. His civil disobedience movement aims to overthrow the government, not limit expediency through the government. This is a stark departure from what Thoreau aimed to achieve from civil disobedience.

None of the revolutions quoted earlier adopted civil disobedience as a means towards midterm elections, which is what Khan is gearing for. Using the term revolution as a means to gain political power is not unheard of – just abhorred. Democracy for Thoreau was an enabler of political expediency which ultimately led to the oppression of citizens. In other cases, civil disobedience was called as a means to achieve social justice and political emancipation. The underlying theme in all forms of revolution is emancipation – a concept the PTI’s politics is far removed from.

Khan found himself in a difficult position behind the podium on Sunday evening. He had a fifty thousand strong crowd to control and keep entertained. Four people lost their lives on the way to Islamabad and several fainted from standing for hours in the sweltering heat. Khan had the duty to make it appear that their sacrifices were not in vain. But Khan bumbled. Merely two hours after announcing his civil disobedience campaign, he backtracked on his previous stance of sitting to talks with the government and allowing a judicial commission to conduct an impartial probe into rigging allegations. He announced that Nawaz Sharif would have to step down.

There is a very personal flavour to Khan’s politics. He believes in himself, and himself foremost. He can decry the Sharifs for all their nepotism, but has to answer for the sheer narcissism with which he conducts his own party.

After his abrupt departure from Zaman Park, Javed Hashmi was brought back to the PTI fold not on bald-faced threats about not being able to control party workers but the guarantee that the PTI would consider negotiations with the sitting government. Hashmi’s solitary protest fell on deaf ears as Khan seems to have started a bushfire that does not appear to bode well for his civil disobedience.

PTI’s politics lacks the ideological bent civil disobedience movements are impossible without. For Martin Luther King Jr it was the emancipation of African Americans, for Estonians in the Baltics it was the idea of breaking free from state-sponsored strictures of the Soviet Union, for Mandela it was the apartheid. In this case, its the call for premiership. Not even the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which many look down upon as an oppressive rabble-rousing, saw the Ayatollah mobilise people to earn him the top slot.

There have been serious ideological basis to all revolutions and civil disobediences that Khan has grossly overlooked.

Moeed Peerzada, a political analyst, said this was a tactic to gain international traction for his movement, whereby international agencies would believe that this call would cripple the economy and force the government to give into his demands. Peerzada says that civil disobedience is a tactic that holds much sway in western countries. That Khan’s movement will now gain momentum and shake things.

By giving the ominous warning that two days from now Khan would not be responsible for his workers’ actions, Khan has stacked all of his chips on hoping for a violent confrontation from the state. A bid to gain even more sympathy from international quarters, it would seem.

Unfortunately for the rest of the apolitical populace glued to its TV screens for the next thrilling round of speeches, Khan’s call has come as a letdown. From a man who promised the moon, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa ended up receiving a moon walk. His tactics reveal themselves to be naive and ignorant of how Pakistan’s economy works. The long march might just end up with a long walk back home for Khan and especially his party leaders now left wondering whether they were pulling the cart for the wrong horse. The possibility of a civil disobedience movement in Pakistan has the potential to shake the very grounds of the state. Yet the lackadaisical call to stop paying your bills is only going end up in severed meter connections for citizens already leading miserable lives.

This calls for a rethinking of the role of opposition parties in Pakistan and maybe the possibility of reining in the odd loose cannon.

By Sarah Eleazar
ZoneAsia-Pk