The 'Azadi' effect.

Byline: Nasir Jamal

On Friday, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the chief of his faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, gave the prime minister until Sunday (yesterday) to step down from his office. If he didn't quit before the two-day deadline was over, the JUI-F patriarch warned, the voters - whose mandate he alleged had been stolen in the last year's elections - would be free to choose whichever course of action they thought best to bring down the 14-month old Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf government.

During his late evening address to his followers, the JUI-F chief went on to sound Prime Minister Imran Khan a warning that the people could force their entry into the prime minister house and 'arrest' him. 'We won't be able to show more patience after that point (that is, the expiry of the deadline),' he thundered amid cheers from his supporters who had descended on the capital a day before, after a five-day journey from Karachi and other cities.

By the time these lines were being written on Saturday morning it wasn't clear how long the Maulana planned to stay in Islamabad and if, as indicated by him in the speech, his supporters would be willing to use violence to force the premier to resign from his office. Nor was it clear how far the political parties, including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan People's Party, will go in backing the Maulana's antigovernment push. It also reminded unclear as to how the government intended to deal with the protestors, especially in case they decided to leave their designated protest venue and spread out into the city to force its hand.

'The long-term cost of the protests is much harder to quantify but the bigger concern is more to do with Pakistan's image as a stable business environment'

Although the JUI-F has so far decided to confine its protest to Islamabad, the prospects of yet another sit-in that could continue for weeks and even months is already giving the businessmen jitters. Many are expecting the JUI-F gathering to remain peaceful during their stay in the capital, yet some fear that the JUI-F crowd has every ingredient to turn violent if it continues indefinitely.

As it is too early to predict what shape the JUI-F's anti-government campaign will ultimately take to achieve its goal, it is equally hard to tell how it is going to impact the country's fragile economy in the medium to long run. But some immediate tangible and intangible consequences of this protest campaign for the economy have already...

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