PDM , Is something new there?

Mohammad Fawad Dawood
Pakistan has seen dozens of movements with different cover pages against different governments. Pakistan’s political journey is full of religious, ethnic, sectarian and political agitations. The very first was the Bengali language movement which originated in Karachi. Similarly, another movement was against Ahmediyas or Qadianies, which was encountered by force and ended in huge losses of lives and individuals. These forfeitures eventually led to the first Martial Law in Pakistan’s history in the very same year. The next national scaled movement was just started right after the Tashkant declaration in 1966. This movement spread on streets of the country and within just two years of that agitation, Ayub Khan had to resign from power. General Yahya Khan faced the same after the fall of Dhaka. Bhutto was and still considered one of the most popular leaders in South Asian history. One can wonder but he also has faced an  Anti-Bhutto movement. Just after the General elections of 1977, the elections were accused of being rigged by the Bhutto Government. Political parties refused to go with results and they formed an alliance. Nine parties were included in that alliance, which was named as Pakistan National Alliance(PNA). Later PNA played religious cards and the alliance converted into the Nizam-e-Mustafa movement. Bhutto tried to negotiate with PNA but all that drama was ended by the Declaration of Martial Law by Zia ul Haq and later Bhutto was hanged. Still the 1977 general elections have been considered by far fairest elections in Pakistan’s electoral history. Moving forward, later Zia ul Haq faced Pakistan’ largest agitation against any military dictator. Political workers were arrested, executed publicly. The Shahi Qila was a very famous prison and the most vulnerable political activists to the government were taken there to teach some “Yes Sir” lessons. After the restoration of democracy, even the elected governments were also faced agitated movements and long marches by political and democratic movements. In the time period of 1990-1999 Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Qazi Hussain Ahmed marched against each other several times. The latest and last military dictator was General Musharaf , however he was a bit different from his military successors. He didn’t try to suppress the voices as relentlessly as his successor did. He allowed private news channels to establish in Pakistan. Top 3 famous private news channels got their licenses in General Musharraf’s era. Lawyers movement also gained popularity in 2007-2009 and later joined by Nawaz Sharif and other opposition parties to restore the judges. This movement was named first as “Adliya Bachao Tehreek” and later as “Adliya Bahi Tehreek”. This movement was ended in success after the restoration of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhry. In 2013, Pakistani politics was introduced by a new type of agitation which is called Dharna and Container politics. A religious, political figure named Tahir ul Qadri stormed the capital with thousands of children, women and men. Tahir ul Qadri is head of two organisations. One is religious (Minhaj ul Quran) and the other one is the political arm (Pakistan Awwami Tehreek). The Qadri’s dharna ended in failure because he couldn’t achieve his objectives, “Inqilab ( Alteration of Pakistan’s political system)” and the dismissal of the sitting PPP government. The dharna agitation and container politics were taken to the next level in 2014 by the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf. Imran Khan led a movement which was named Azadi march. He led the march to Islamabad from Lahore and jammed the capital by Hundreds of vehicles, demanding the resignation of sitting PM Nawaz Sharif. His dharna agitation was demanding resignation for 126 days. Finally on 16 December 2016, APS incident occurred and he had to end his agitation on moral grounds.But he had successfully weakened the government. Khadim Hussain Rizvi a religious cleric also tried to gain something in 2018, 2019 and 2020 but he couldn’t gain much other than a cheque of 1000 rupee by Gen Faiz in 2018 and some promises later. PTM gained some sympathy on ethnic grounds but it is believed that this movement has been hijacked by foreign powers and lost its original spirit of FATA reforms. A political figure Fazal ur Rehman which mostly has been part of the government lost elections and couldn’t make it into the National  Assembly. He tried to exploit religious cards against Imran Khan by calling him a Jew agent in 2019 and launched a so-called “Million March” but failed to incite any damage to the government. Then later in September 2020, opposition parties of Pakistan formed a political alliance named PDM ( Pakistan Democratic Movement). (Continue) The old hunter Fazal ur Rehman was placed as head of PDM by political leaders of PDM. This alliance included 11 major opposition parties with a single objective, “removal of government” or atleast removal of Imran Khan as term used minus one. They took the motto of the PMLN election campaign “Vote ko izzat do”. Maryam Nawaz emerged as a crowd puller but his reputation has been damaged after a midsized jalsa of PDM at Minar e Pakistan on 13th December 2020. Lahore is considered as the stronghold of PMLN. But still PMLN with the help of 9 other parties, couldn’t fill the ground at least reported by neutral observers. PDM made the hype that they will announce the resignation of all opposing parties from all the assemblies but they delayed the decision and gave the date of 31 December for collection of resignations by members of assemblies. But till the date, they weren’t even able to collect the resignation, submitting to the Speaker of the National Assembly is another matter. Maryam Nawaz and Faza ur Rehman are not part of assemblies so they have nothing at stake in person. PPP enjoys the government of Sindh province so this is very difficult for them to suddenly resign from power and face the music of NAB and accountability on their own. 2021 seems to be the year of death for PDM.Establishment and civil governments seems to be very much on the same page. PM Imran Khan is the biggest threat to PM Imran Khan’s government.