***Har Soo Hmare Khoon ke Cheente Gire Tau Kya !
Yh Tau Hua Ke Shehr ko Raa’ni mil Gye !***
Pakistan protesters fail to live up to ideals
By Victor Mallet in Islamabad
Demonstrations aim to topple elected government
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Rehman Ali, a 27-year-old factory worker from Lahore, has declared himself ready for death in the fight against corruption and poverty.
**“I’ve told my wife that if I die here as a martyr, she should make arrangements for my funeral,” **he said last week as thousands of Pakistanis like him prepared to march on parliament and the prime minister’s residence in the capital, Islamabad. He was protected only by pink swimming goggles and a mask over his mouth to keep out the tear gas.
When the assault was finally launched at the weekend by protesters wielding wooden clubs and wire-cutters, at least three people were indeed killed and hundreds injured in the police counter-attack. The stand-off continues, with almost every word and deed broadcast to some 200m Pakistanis on 24-hour television news channels.
But the deeper reasons for Mr Ali’s presence at the barricades, and the motivations of those who led him there for three weeks of street protests aimed at toppling the elected government of Nawaz Sharif, remain an enigma.
**The two protest leaders, who have also offered to martyr themselves in a hail of government bullets, claim to be championing democracy in one of the world’s largest Islamic nations. But their actions and their speeches suggest the opposite.
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Imran Khan, the former cricket star turned politician, has likened the demonstrations in Islamabad to the Tahrir Square uprising that toppled authoritarian Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak three years ago.
Mr Khan complains that Mr Sharif rigged the election that brought him to power last year but he has not adequately explained why it took him 15 months to reach this pitch of outrage.
Others believe the event is more notable for being the first transfer of power between one democratically elected government and another in the history of coup-prone Pakistan.
**Nor has Mr Khan reminded his supporters that in Egypt, Tahrir Square ushered in a controversial Islamist government followed by brutal suppression and a new military takeover.
Political rivals dismiss his protest as an act of desperation after his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Justice Movement) came third in the general election and he failed in his ambition to become prime minister.**
Tahirul Qadri, the fiery Islamic preacher and self-styled revolutionary who has provided most of the frontline demonstrators in Islamabad (Mr Khan’s generally middle-class supporters arrive in the evening to hear his speeches interspersed with disco music), is harder to explain.
Mr Qadri is based in Canada, not Pakistan, and returns periodically to intervene in politics. In early 2013, just a few months before the election, he led a similar march on Islamabad that failed to overthrow the previous government of Asif Ali Zardari.
**Many Pakistani analysts and politicians say it is the army that deploys Mr Qadri and quietly supports his protests when it wants to oust or destabilise a civilian administration.
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**The army’s generals certainly distrust Mr Sharif,
****who has sought to make peace with India, delayed army operations against Taliban militants along the Afghan border and is pursuing a treason case against Pervez Musharraf, the former army chief who overthrow him in a military coup d’état in 1999.
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Mr Sharif himself, however, cannot escape blame for the current crisis. He is regarded as aloof, monarchical and dynastic (his brother Shahbaz is chief minister of the populous Punjab province) and has disappointed supporters who expected him to use his third term as prime minister to revive the struggling economy and tackle Islamist terrorism.
“He didn’t seem to have fire in his belly this time,” says Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a senator who chairs the upper house’s defence committee. “He seems to be bored with the job of prime minister.”
Some critics go further. They call him weak and cowardly, complaining that he has scarcely attended parliament and say he is rattled by the rise of opponents in the previously secure Sharif fiefdom of Punjab (both Mr Qadri and Mr Khan come, like him, from Lahore).
Pakistan, to paraphrase the apocalyptic lines of W.B. Yeats, is torn between politicians full of passionate intensity and those who lack all conviction. The protests have not yet turned to anarchy. But even if Mr Sharif survives this crisis, his government – and Pakistani democracy – will probably be enfeebled.
