The Pakistan reality show

By: Saba Imtiaz

This is the first time a protest `without legs' has paralyzed Islamabad so successfully. There are other things that mark it out as a unique movement.

In Pakistan, a crisis is always around the corner. It's hard to recall a month, nay, a day, where one hasn't been obsessively glued to the television and wondering if this is the end of the government as we know it.

But the current political saga -a 24-hour bizarre spectacle led by men holding court atop shipping containers converted into stages and living quarters -is unlike any in Pakistan in recent years. And it has all the familiarity of a coup unfolding in slow motion.

So what's new, jaded observers of Pakistan will say . Sure, this isn't the first crisis, nor will it be the last. But this may be the first time a protest without legs -or any of the promised one million people who were supposed to attend -has paralyzed Islamabad and Pakistani politics so successfully. While there have been plenty of crises in the past few years -from Supreme Court cases to standoffs between the US and Pakistan -a prime minister and his administration have been left floundering as a result of the men on containers.

Container campaign

Imran Khan holds court on one container, with a DJ in tow spinning party anthems. Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party is protesting against what it believes was widespread rigging in the May 2013 parliamentary elections. Khan believes the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League party was responsible for the electoral fraud and has vowed he will not end his protest until Sharif resigns.

The Pakistani-Canadian cleric Tahir-ulQadri is helming another container -and a band of religious devotees -and is campaigning for a complete overthrow of the political system. In recent days, Qadri has joined forces with Khan and his party .

They led a `march' of a few thousand supporters each from Lahore to Islamabad, and have spent the days making long speeches replete with unfounded allegations and claims, offering up enough fodder for internet memes and spoofs. Khan has taken to addressing everyone from the US ambassador to Pakistan to government officials as `Oye..' and making puerile comments about Sharif, including some that are unfit for publication. And while Khan and Qadri have been ensconced in their containers, their supporters have battled it out in the streets with the police.

How did it get to this state: that a few thousand protestors have put the government in defensive mode? Critics of the PM claim he could have headed off the crisis and agreed to Imran Khan's demands of investigating election rigging months earlier. Khan's opponents say he should have used the Parliament to make a forceful case instead of camping outside it. And everyone agrees that Qadri's demands of a complete overhaul are entirely illogical -a similar protest by him geared at derailing last year's elections fizzled out as well.

Military out but in

But there's a familiar spectre of military involvement here. While it has almost always been a shadowy figure behind political instability, Pakistan's powerful military has been centre stage in the ongoing saga. The military has long been accused of implicitly supporting Khan and Qadri, and the recent protests seem to have made these links more visible.The president of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Javed Hashmi broke ranks with his party to accuse Khan of having links with the military and retired officers and claimed that Khan seemed to have been reassured -by whom, we aren't quite sure -that the government would fall as a result of the protests. The military has denied these claims. More complicated still was an announcement that the military would be facilitating talks with Qadri and Khan, causing widespread concern and anger at Prime Minister Sharif as Qadri and a grinning Khan raced off to meet the army chief. The government announced it was actually Qadri and Khan's idea to bring in the boots. But the military rebutted the civilians, claiming it was the government who had asked them to step in.Despite its many denials, the military has become a central figure in the current crisis enveloping Pakistan, and there are far too many questions that have been raised for this to be a purely political protest.

In the 1990s, the fear was always that the military would take over or that the president would make use of a (since scrapped) constitutional measure to get rid of the government. The most marked difference in the current round is the fear that the military is in on it, and that there would be a change in government with handpicked politicos without the military officially taking over.

Protest live, 24x7

With or without rigging, Khan would have had a reason to protest: that is what political opponents do. And even though they didn't have the supporters, round-the-clock news coverage of Khan and Qadri has let them effectively sell a narrative that the 2013 election -once assumed to be at least freer and fairer than those in years past -was almost entirely rigged, and that the Sharif administration's poor governance would be better kicked to the curb. The issue, most political parties have said, isn't with the content of the protests: it's the way they're being conducted, hinging on an illogical and unconstitutional demand to overthrow an elected prime minister. The media coverage itself has been bizarre: while TV channels have always been partial to Imran Khan, news broadcasts now resemble The Truman Show, with second-bysecond reporting of what Qadri ate for breakfast and where Khan is exercising.

One for all, all for one

The other surprising difference in the current crisis is that instead of helping sink Sharif 's ship, political parties have jumped on board in support. In a rare moment of unity , political parties have vowed to support democracy and not allow Sharif to resign.They've started negotiating with Qadri and Khan, even as they've called on Sharif to improve the way he runs the country .

The protests may end soon if the negotiations are successful. But this government has been inexorably shaken by the way they have lost control -both to political opponents and to the military . Pakistan is still a democracy -this isn't quite the doom-andgloom scenario of a coup and Sharif may still survive all of this -but the idea of a civilian democracy has been killed yet again.