Moeed Pirzada, a PTI follower, in distress analysis:
Why Imran Khan's Azadi March & Dharna look like a flop? What went wrong? -
this is 6.30am, on Sat and I am up since 22 hours and so I have an idea what tiredness can do to anyone who has not slept for 40 plus hours and who has been traveling and addressing public gatherings across many towns, sitting in rain and battling hostile crowds and so on - so I can understand that Imran and all PTI leaders wanted to take a rest, and wanted to recharge before resuming their political campaigning. But the way it happened has disrupted whatever momentum they had generated by their 40 hour long march from Lahore through GT road and most of the political capital, the public trust and emotion they had created in their slogans in their fierce campaign over the past several months if not the past whole year. And they did it by suddenly disappearing from the 'pandal' ie the venue of their 'Azadi March' on Kashmir Road, after telling their followers and workers that Dharna to demand
Nawaz Sharif's resignation will start from 3pm.
What went wrong? Disasters and Failures in life often consist of simple things. We may fear others destroying us, of overtaking and overpowering us but in the end we often are our worst enemies. We in media had blasted the Nawaz & Shahbaz Govt for unleashing the coercive forces of state against their political opponents - Model Town massacres, arrests, detentions, seizures and Containerization and road blocks etc - and our argument was always that let Qadri and Imran come to Islamabad with their followers and let govt negotiate with them. Argument was: Political threat to PMLN lay not in crowds with demands but in unintended violence that may spiral out of control.
Similarly the threat to PTI and PAT did not lie in govt's coercive machinery it was inside the limitations of their own vision and management ability. Imran and PTI's failure existed in their inability to differentiate between the logistical requirements of a glorious "city jalsa" and a "Long March like Azadi March" - PTI did not understand the dynamics of what it entailed, what was needed. For instance on Thursday when a few thousand PTI workers arrived from KPK into Islamabad, expecting to join a roaring crowd somewhere the CM KPK welcomed them but PTI had no arrangements for their stay, sleeping, food and water and toilettes etc. Those hapless Pashtuns loitered around Aabpara market and other areas in Islamabad, purchased burgers and sandwiches for Rs. 200 a piece and then most of them left. A police officer told me that he had counted around 400 Pick Ups and most of them had left by Friday morning and the Police Officer was convinced that they - the PTI workers - were so pissed off, so upset by the time they left that they won't be coming back.
PTI's march across Punjab suffered from similar mismanagement and lack of understanding issues. The beating they received at the hands of PMLN in Gujranwala now appears only a small minute part of their challenges; the larger problem lied in their failure of management and planning. Their venue in Islamabad kept changing, they never arranged for food, water, shelter and toilettes etc for their supporters and they never understood the impact of rain. So when they finally descended upon Islamabad around 2am or so and reached the Jalsa they had no real plan how to handle all this. Worse, their speeches against Nawaz Sharif and the system that did not function were fiery but little did they realize - even while making those revolutionary speeches of dying for change - that they had not planned anything for the next few hours. Crowds in thousands kept braving continuous rain, kept chanting and roaring but leaders who vowed not to leave Islamabad till the ouster of Nawaz Govt had neither planned for the next few hours of the crowds nor communicated to the crowds as to what needs to be done. Clear communication of issues and challenges to crowds matters. So no one knew what to do, no one told what crowds should do, where should they go and where to hide from rain? So as soon as the visionless leadership disappeared the public - the confused mass of protoplasm by now - also melted into the nearby markets. Will they turn up at 3am on Sat? I don't know! Some of them may, but my guess is that most of them would leave, they were not told, not explained and whereas by morning - if it is not raining - new crowds might turn up from Rawalpindi and PTI leaders might give apologies and explanations my feeling is that momentum of this long march is broken.
What should Nawaz govt do? Anyone who has watched our TV discussions over the past few days would remember that I had repeatedly argued that Imran's demands are a 'maximalist agenda' up for negotiations and scaling down. And also that marchers - both Imran Khan & Dr. Qadri - are coming to Islamabad under a cooperative framework, with permissions, demarcated areas and red lines; these never represented the conquering armies of Gen. Douglas McArthur into a fallen Japan, or a Paul Bremer into Iraq; these were disgruntled political elements with political demands and they need political solutions for genuine problems that exist regarding the Elections 2013. Nawaz govt now has a clear upper hand, not due to its coercive apparatus or policing skills or support of the army but by virtue of its tolerance, its patience, its political judgment that protesters/marchers should be allowed, accommodated and negotiated with. It should still go ahead and politically accommodate both Imran and Dr. Qadri. Remember real power speaks with politeness and its time to be polite and accommodating.
Lets meet with more on politics in our broadcasts in next few hours - until then Khuda Hafiz!
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