The five-point agreement arrived at last week between the government and the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) leadership is too explicit to admit an ambiguous interpretation. Finalized following several rounds of talks, it spelled out in most clear words as to what the government would undertake once the TLP protestors wind up their sit-ins across the country. The government interlocutors had volunteered that there would be no government opposition to any review petition that seeks to overturn Aasia Bibi’s acquittal; it would begin process to put her name on the Exit Control List; anyone arrested during the three-day protests would be immediately released and anyone responsible for the deaths of TLP workers would face legal action. On its part, the TLP signatories, half-heartedly, offered apology if their words or actions had hurt anyone’s feelings. The agreement was written in Urdu, the national language, not only for its wider circulation, but also to circumvent any ambiguous interpretation as to what the two sides agreed to. Given that the agreement was signed by the government at the level of concerned ministers and by the top leadership of the TLP, the sit-ins were called off immediately and daily life of the people returned to normality. All of it was in damn negation of the prime minister’s much ballyhooed speech that no one can dare challenge the writ of state – and none but his own ministers subverted that writ. What is then this post-capitulation bluster that the top TLP leadership has been booked; those arrested would be duly penalized and those who were not would be sought out and punished. Is it that the lamb is threatening the wolf to kick out his eyes? The information minister says the state would not turn a blind eye to the “recent rebellious protests … Provocative speeches and statements of so-called religious leaders against state institutions and leaders (read higher judiciary and military leadership) will not be ignored”. Another report says the interior ministry has started criminal proceedings against the rioters involved in destroying properties. And the public has been asked to share videos about the vandalistic incidents with the government through WhatsApp. But nothing will come out of it – a government which couldn’t face these relatively weak protests and stooped to the conqueror wouldn’t go beyond this – not because the protestors looted bananas of a poor boy, because today’s Pakistan is fast turning into a banana republic thanks to its abject surrender to those who violated the writ of state with impunity.

Neither the situation on the ground nor the history of such one-sided agreements justifies so dangerously crouching a posture as put up by the ministers. The agreement has been rejected not only by man in the street, it has been rejected even by most unlikely quarters. “Not the Naya Pakistan we’d hoped for. Three days after a defiant and brave speech defending judiciary, Pakistan’s government caves in to extremist demands by barring Aasia Bibi from leaving Pakistan after she was acquitted of blasphemy – effectively signing her death warrants,” twitted Jemima Goldsmith, a former wife of Prime Minister Imran Khan. However, a dangerous consequence of this abject surrender is outlined by Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari: “the policy of appeasement to avoid bloodshed sends a dangerous message to non-state actors and undermines the very concept of democratic peaceful protest. The state has to enforce the rule of law, Constitution and stand-by state institutions especially when they are targeted … as Chamberlain’s Munich appeasement towards Nazis … to avoid bloodshed in a war-weary Europe led to massive bloodshed and destruction in the form of WWII.” That the government wanted to avoid bloodshed is the ministers’ explanation which will be tested. The question is whether or not it was different from the surrender to protestors at Faizabad last year. Had the government of the day dealt with that effectively we would have been spared of what happened last week at Faizabad and elsewhere. Then the protest was confined to one place, but now it was throughout the country - a reality which surfaced on the day after when the media blackout was lifted. The damage caused by this protest, both in terms of public suffering and business losses, was humongous. Should this Frankenstein return to the public stage, which is now a real possibility, its fallout would be horrendous. According to a Punjabi proverb, sometimes the knot you tie with hands cannot be untied even by teeth.