Is govt confused to handle PTM?
By Elahi Bakhsh
Pashtoon Tahafuz Movement (PTM) is gaining support day by day with the power elite confused as to how to handle them. The later are resorting to heavy highhandedness to de-escalate the situation. Both parties are hurling accusations at each other without substantial proofs.
The PTM accuses the government and establishment of carrying out enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings while the government is showing concerns over the way the PTM movement is being carried out. It is also sceptic about the PTM maintaining that it is canvassing through anti state slogans and threatening public peace by inciting it’s supporters against the state. In this situation of uncertainty, one should not let his emotions go astray and should seek to look at both sides of the picture to reach a conclusion without being swayed away by emotions.
PTM’s demands can be genuine but the methods that it uses to garner support smell unchaste. For an instance, the Waziristan issue it raised of army breaching a family’s privacy later turned out to be all made-up. The case of Arman Loni’s death has also become uncertain; PTM blaming police for the death while police claiming that the postmortem did not show any sign of physical violence.
Anyhow, the state should conduct an inquiry into both the incidents. Now let’s come to the state’s negligence in general and Prime Minister Imran Khan’s silence over the whole matter in particular. The state should first of all, as said earlier, conduct impartial inquiries into the issues raised by PTM. Secondly, it should show its people the true face of the whole situation along with providing details of how the PTM is doing it anti state and how it is threatening public peace and under what law are its supporters being dragged into police vans. As of Imran Khan, then his indifference on the whole issue is teasingly incomprehensible. He was elected to the office not for just carrying on the normal business of the government. People had looked to him for some change and they still do. He has done some justice with his position by criminalizing enforced disappearances but that is not enough. People are getting alienated from the state, either justifiably or under the influence of wrong forces. He should look into the whole matter. PTM’s rightful demands should be fulfilled and if something fishy is going on in the name of civic rights then people want it to be made public so that the wrongdoers are dealt with according to state laws.
The writer is Lecturer in Political Science at GDC Booni.