I would blame the Pakistan Army if they were asked to act against heavily armed well trained miscreants in FATA, Swat and Balochistan .... and they denied and instead tried advising State to make peace with them.
No two opinions on that. I absolutely agree.
But if the Army had come out here in this situation against these protesters .......... seriously I would start panicking and would worry.
There are 200 million people in this country and I am sure a lot of them could have advised a very non violent solution to disperse this crowd ........... like I suggested "Jamal Gota" its a heavenly cure when you have 2,500 heavily halwa addicted zombies protesting. Easy to Jamal Gota all of them and let it sink ........ half an hour max all of them would be running with hands behind their rears. But this solution is only when you really wish to solve the problem.
207.8 Million approximated as per census 2017
While I absolutely agree with the underlying principle that you are emphasising, my contention is more on the need of the hour being a unity of the State and its organs in ensuring a cohesive approach to any challenge to its authority, writ and viability.
I shall give you a hypothetical roll out.
The GoP directed the PA to help in clearing the area. It was a Legal Directive issued by a Legally Elected Government to a Legal Force under the Control of the GoP to an Officer Cadre that is Legally Bound to obey the orders of a Superior Officer as applicable even under the Army Act. (Forget Article 245 for this particular consideration).
A way to deal with this situation could have been the deployment of Armed Forces. That is when your "jamal gota" could have actually kicked in. Everyone is aware that the deployment of armed forces in Aid to Civil Authority entails non-police methods of restoration of order and law. That by itself, would have been having an impact in two ways - it would have shown a cohesiveness in the Governing Structure of Pakistan as a Nation and the writ of the State having the wherewithal to back up with force if necessary, as also created the impression of a PA unwilling to allow radicals to hold the whole country to ransom.
It is here where I would like to draw the example of how IA dealt with requirement in Dera Sacha Sauda recently. The IA formed the advance guard of troops marching in, this cleared the way for the police forces to move in and restore order by means of crowd control measures as applicable to police forces. That was again a case where in IA found itself in precisely the same situation as PA. The difference was in not appearing to undermine the State.
Right now, unfortunately, an impression has gone out that PA has been involved in the whole charade. That bodes very poor for PA and GoP, in terms of potential gain to these radical fringe elements to project it as a situation wherein GoP and PA were scared of taking on.
Who required PA to actually do anything? That is the point I was making.
Country's integrity is above any legal and constitutional process. The govt procrastinated for weeks and finally turned over to the army for use of force without realizing the gravity of the situation.
There were protests in 87 cities/towns after the start of the police action in Islamabad, MNAs and MPAs homes were attacked by mobs throughout Punjab. Had there been more bloodshed at the behest of the court/govt, things could have gotten a lot worse. The last thing which the army wanted was the hostility of a large chunk of population and the deployment of it's assets in an entirely unnecessary and avoidable internal conflict.
The govt disowned the police action. They would have disowned the army action as well whilst pinning the entire responsibility of the subsequent turmoil on the shoulders of the military.
What PA did was like what one would do at a red light when the other passenger is having a heart attack---break the signal.
I agree. Politicians are generally of same breed. My point is as above.