In a recorded televised message on Sunday, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb warned that the protests and marches gathering around Islamabad could cost Pakistan around Rs120 billion every day. Jamaat-i-Islami has set out against the petroleum levy, PTI is preparing its September 27 mobilisation, hundreds of containers have been positioned around the capital, and hospitals have been placed on high alert. The familiar Islamabad protest season is back.
The Planning Commission estimates losses of Rs 86 billion a day in services, Rs 25 billion in industry and Rs 9 billion in agriculture, besides a further Rs 17 billion hit to revenues. Even so, anyone who has watched Islamabad shut down over the past two decades knows that the damage is hardly theoretical. A daily wager does not recover yesterday’s wage. A truck stranded on an arterial road still runs up costs. Perishable produce has a clock of its own, while an overseas client has little patience for unreliable connectivity.
The Islamabad High Court has now drawn a fairly clear line. Peaceful protest is a constitutional right. Occupying highways, interchanges and public places in a manner that blocks movement, business, hospitals and schools is not. The court has also barred provincial governments from putting public resources behind such marches.
However, the government weakens that case when prevention begins to swallow the political space it is supposed to protect. Police are monitoring guest houses, bus terminals, transport providers and potential suppliers of food and lodging. Preventive detention orders have been issued under the MPO, Section 144 has been imposed in Punjab, four PTI activists have been arrested in Islamabad after police alleged violence during a raid, and Aleema Khan has been detained for 30 days under a public-order order. Authorities have every right to act against violence. Detaining people before an offence has been committed raises a different question.Join Social Campaigns
Those at the helm should also realise that protests do not grow in an economic vacuum. JI is agitating against a petroleum levy at a time when taxes and duties amount to roughly Rs 114 per litre on petrol and Rs 100 on diesel. Nonetheless, PTI’s mobilisation is political and centred on Imran Khan’s release and what it calls constitutional supremacy.
The opposition has obligations of its own. If the petroleum levy is to go, what replaces the revenue? If a dispute concerns a conviction, what lawful route resolves it? Crowds create pressure. Sadly, they do not answer those questions.
The finance minister calls the coming disruption “self-inflicted pain.” After 2014, Faizabad and every container wall since, Pakistan should know exactly what that means.
