Internal chaos.

THE incumbent government seems to be having great trouble asserting itself while remaining within the limits of the law. With the interior minister making it clear that he is willing to go to any lengths - 'democratic or undemocratic; principled or unprincipled' - to counter the PTI, he has just confirmed the worst fears of political analysts and observers who have been warning about Pakistan's gradual slide towards totalitarianism.

'There are no laws and no rules' binding the government any longer, to paraphrase Rana Sanaullah. In other words, the PDM government will abuse state power if it needs to in order to neutralise the once again resurgent PTI. 'It is us or them,' as the interior minister quite candidly explained in a recent interview during which he made these remarks. This hardly bodes well for national stability.

However one may interpret Mr Sanaullah's statement, the PML-N is clearly struggling to counter the PTI politically. It may not acknowledge this, but the large rally in Lahore's Greater Iqbal Park late Saturday was a clear enough message that using state-sanctioned violence to cut the party down to size does not appear to be working.

The rally was, by most independent accounts, quite well-attended despite the Punjab administration's efforts. The arrest and disappearance, respectively, of two prominent young faces in the PTI - lawyer Hassaan Niazi and head of the PTI's social media team, Azhar Mashwani - reports of the detention of lower-level party organisers and their family members; police raids at supporters and sympathisers' homes; and the willy-nilly...