The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), a coalition of 11 establishment parties in the country, organized a rally attracting over 10,000 people on Sunday, openly defying Prime Minister Imran Khan’s request that, in response to a surge of Chinese coronavirus cases, parties cancel mass events.
Khan has not outlawed the rallies – known as jalsas – to avoid accusations of censoring the opposition, he said in November, but he requested that all political entities practice caution in organizing events that could result in the rapid dissemination of the Chinese coronavirus.
Khan’s political party, the Islamist group Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has canceled its events, but his request has largely fallen on deaf ears. Following the rally on Sunday, PDM leaders said they would soon organize another mass event, a march from Lahore to Islamabad. The cities are about 200 miles apart.
In addition to PDM events, radical Islamist groups have organized several rallies that have devolved into riots in Islamabad, primarily to protest French President Emmanuel Macron’s condemnation of the beheading of a schoolteacher in a Paris suburb for showing students cartoons of Muhammad. The leader of one of these groups, Khadim Hussain Rizvi of the radical Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), died in November of an unspecified respiratory illness following a mass rally against Macron. Local reports did not indicate if doctors tested him for coronavirus.
As of Monday, Pakistan has documented 440,787 confirmed cases of Chinese coronavirus and 8,832 deaths. Given the nation’s meager healthcare system and lack of access to proper medical care in many impoverished areas, the true number is likely to be significantly higher.
Sunday’s rally was the sixth such event by the PDM in recent months and featured Khan’s predecessor, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif lost his office following revelations of widespread corruption from a document dump known as the “Panama Papers” – leaks from a now-defunct Panamanian firm known as Mossack Fonseca. Pakistan’s Supreme Court declared Sharif “unfit for office” in 2017. While he can no longer vy for a major political office, daughter Maryam has become one of the biggest draws at PDM rallies. At the rally on Sunday, Nawaz Sharif defended his reputation, claiming that his only “crime is that I speak the truth.” Daughter Maryam also attempted to defend her family from the damage caused by the Panama Papers case years ago and blame Khan for alleged government mismanagement.
Khan responded to the rally by calling it “pathetic” and claiming it was an attempt to “blackmail” him into granting those involved in the Panama Papers scandal amnesty for corruption charges. Khan has the power to issue a National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) that would clear the individuals involved of the crimes they allegedly committed.
“PDM spent so much money, time, effort and displayed utter callousness by endangering people’s lives during Covid-19 [Chinese coronavirus] spike, showing the scant regard they have for citizens’ safety and well-being,” Khan wrote on Twitter. “All this just to blackmail me into giving them an NRO to save their looted wealth.”
Let me once again reiterate: I will never give an NRO. Whatever future plans of further blackmail PDM may have, my message is categorical: There will never be an NRO from my govt no matter what tactics the looters devise.
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) December 13, 2020
Others in Khan’s administration mocked the PDM for proclaiming prior to the rally that it would attract “millions.”
“Despite all the freedom, the PDM failed to attract enough supporters for their gathering, and ended up setting a five-acre tent in a 150-acre park,” Information Minister Shibli Faraz said. “There were only about 10,000 chairs at the jalsa venue which shows PDM’s ineffectiveness.”
Faraz joked that the event was “as cold as the weather.”
Industries’ and Production Minister Hammad Azhar also mocked the coalition.
Even the most sympathetic channels for PMLN/PDM are struggling hard with their camera angles to find a suitably decent crowd size.
11 parties couldn't match the size and junoon of PTI jalsas in Lahore.
— Hammad Azhar (@Hammad_Azhar) December 13, 2020
Another Khan official, Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, summarized the PDM political platform as “save corruption [and] spread coronavirus,” according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
The PDM had succeeded in bringing more people together on past occasions, also in violation of Khan’s request to cancel political rallies to stop the spread of the Chinese coronavirus. In October, a PDM rally filled a stadium of 50,000 sympathizers, multiple times the number they attracted on Sunday. The event this week nonetheless violated social distancing protocols used around the world to combat the highly contagious disease.
The current surge in coronavirus cases followed several riots against the French following the beheading of Samuel Paty, the schoolteacher, on October 16. Paty’s planned killing occurred after offended parents began to use networking in mosques to urge violence against him, resulting in Macron enacting policies to shut down mosques and other Islamic centers suspected of promoting or spreading jihadist calls to violence.
In response to Macron’s policies – and he award of the Legion of Honor to Paty at a memorial ceremony – thousands of Pakistanis attempted to storm the French Embassy in Islamabad on multiple occasions. In November, TLP organized several rallies attracting thousands of people, including one that illegally became a march from Rawalpindi to Islamabad and lasted over 24 hours. Rizvi, the TLP leader, died of an unknown respiratory illness after attending the Rawalpindi march.
Rizvi’s funeral drew tens of thousands of people, itself an event at high risk for the spread of coronavirus. Khan, who offered Rizvi condolences and has repeatedly promoted criminalizing “blasphemy” at a global level, did not condemn crowding at the funeral.
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