The biggest breaking news about the Long March hardly found a mention in any news bulletin or talk show, which are dime a dozen in Pakistan’s mushrooming electronic media: its peaceful conduct.
Post-Nine Eleven, the country has been a battleground for various hues of extremists to ply their ideology through a weapon of destruction — suicide attacks — that prompted respected publications like Newsweek and The Economist to infamously dub it as “The Most Dangerous Place in The World”.
But since the lawyers movement for the restoration of deposed judiciary is a popular cause and finds resonance amongst even the rightwing parties (minus, of course, the JUI-F acrobat Fazlur Rehman) and groups on the fringes, there is substance in the view that marching lawyers and members of the general public did not have to look over their shoulders in making a statement on the streets.
Any fears over security were, in fact, focused on how the authorities, not militants, deal with the march participants.
The ruling Pakistan People’s Party, which has earned the ire of the lawyer community for reneging on the restoration of judges under the Murree Declaration, initially readied its administrative muscle to contain the marchers but did an about-turn just in time when realization dawned that any physical clash would be counterproductive.
The huge containers the government had deployed at the Constitution Avenue were removed to give way to the lawyers after an agreement was reached by a team from the legal community and the federal government over a code of conduct.
In the end, it turned out to be a smart move by the government because a confrontation would have directed much of the public anger towards itself. The wise counsel after PM’s Advisor on Interior Rehman Malik, the PPP government’s Achilles’ heel, appeared ready to flex his muscles helped it stave off a potentially damaging situation.
Few have forgotten last year’s brutal police assault on lawyers and members of the civil society in their protest campaign against then-General Pervez Musharraf.
An encore in the form of riot police, or in a worse case scenario, calling the troops would have played right into the hands of destructive elements.
But the passing of the Long March peacefully, is more significant in terms of security posers it held for the protagonists at the heart of this movement. Some of our intelligence agencies are notorious for playing the devil on such occasions.
Therefore, the lives of deposed chief justice Iftikar Muhammad Chaudhry, Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan and host of his legal comrades as well as former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and a string of his top aides could have been in danger.
Perhaps, this is why the public appearances of the deposed top judge and Sharif as well as their mode of travel — by air — right through the Long March were carefully choreographed.
Both the government and movers-and-shakers of the lawyers movement would have heaved a sigh of relief at the safe culmination of the march.
But it is really the aftermath of the march that has left many wonderstruck.
From a boisterous, carnival-like atmosphere Friday night into the wee hours of Saturday to a deafening silence since, Islamabad’s Parade Ground has undergone a complete transformation — almost as if by magic.
Only until Friday night with the country in thrall, all roads led, unmistakably, to the picturesque Parade Ground in the federal capital — the destination of the lawyers’ ultimate power demonstration.
Regardless of the numbers, which given the high stakes of the involved parties is being hotly disputed, Islamabad seemed to come alive with animated slogans and placards screaming defiance.
Apart from the lawyers, political party activists and members of civil society, even families partook the congenial atmosphere as if it were a festival.
The weather was not so kind to the participants by the afternoon but with a brightly lit evening and high profile speakers to make their day, residents of Islamabad ignored the tide of June to make their presence felt.
But that was Friday night and the early hours of Saturday morning. After that, the Parade Ground looked more like a ghost town. It was almost as if the party had gone up in smoke and participants vanished into thin air. Small wonder, everyone is wondering what Friday the 13th was about.
The Long March itself has been a subject of intense scrutiny, not in the least because the biggest stakeholder, which is the legal community, has found it difficult to target Asif Zardari, the ruling PPP leader, despite knowing that he remains a hurdle in the restoration of the deposed judges, for fear that an open confrontation would split their own ranks.
Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan, the spirit behind the lawyers’ movement, belongs to the PPP and despite his differences with the party, he has had to walk a tightrope.
The PML-N, which is the second largest political party, and whose support is critical to any success the lawyers are able to muster is itself caught by political compulsions, which ironically align it to the PPP.
Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N chief, surprised political pundits by leading his party to major success in last February polls on the plank of restoring the deposed judiciary.
Not only is Sharif beholden to the judicial cause but his own eventual route to power, he and political observers agree, inevitably lies with the successful restoration of deposed judges. This explains Sharif’s relentless high pitch on the issue in contrast to the dithering by the PPP.
It remains to be seen how far Sharif can risk his association with the ruling coalition partner given that PML-N’s hold on the crucial Punjab province remains fragile and the PPP’s mere pullout from the coalition in that province could lead to the collapse of the provincial government.
However, the dynamics of the lawyers’ movement could itself lead to re-alignments. In the long term, PML-N cannot continue to look like the PPP’s bridesmaid given the massive slide in the PPP’s popularity after reneging on the Murree Declaration.
Sooner rather than later, it will be forced to take the demand for the restoration to the next level and that could see them revive the All Pakistan Democratic Movement with the likes of Imran Khan Tehrik-i-Insaf, Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s Jamaat-e-Islami and Mehmood Achakzai’s Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party taking to the streets in a much more challenging gambit.
Whichever way the drama unfolds, it promises to be a sizzling summer.