What is relevant is that the army’s moral authority over the actors involved in this fracas was on display for all to see.Īfter several weeks of the tiresome protests, the apprehension now holding sway is that the deadlock – pivoted on the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif – may take the country back to the ‘politics of the 90s’. Whether the COAS intervened on the government’s request, or on the request of the protesters (who kept asking for the “umpire” to raise his finger), is irrelevant. Almost like clockwork then, on August 28, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif met with both Khan and Qadri and gave his assurances that any investigation concerning rigging allegations would be conducted impartially.

One of the normative fissures along which this debate has fragmented is the threat to democratic continuity - a slanted way of referring to the potential for covert or overt political intrusion by the military establishment. The space for rational, dispassionate analysis remains predictably small. As in the build-up to the (first historic and now, much maligned) general election held in May last year, partisan sentiment both for and against political manoeuvring by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) dots every television and drawing-room conversation.

Long marches by Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, and subsequent encampment in Islamabad, linger on as the most newsworthy issue in the country.

Darya ko kozay main band karna in urdu