Oscar Wilde once said: “Give a man a mask and he will tell the truth.”
Nawaz Sharif is no character from Wilde’s fictional world of plays or poems and he is bent upon proving that too. It is also immaterial now if he is telling the truth or not because the way he has spoken at Pakistan Democratic Movement rallies at Gujranwala and Quetta, he is coming across as someone referred to by Josephine Hart in her 1991 novel, Damage, when she wrote that “damaged people are dangerous; they know they can survive.”

The coming together of 11 political parties against Prime Minister Imran Khan and his hobbling administration is an ominous sign for Pakistani politics. Not for the reason that the PDM is knitted around two of the largest parties in the country whose leaders have headed previous governments despite being depicted as wily foxes of partisan politics, or that some of its regional leaders have been pushed out of the parliamentary politics by ballot or blunder. The movement is ominous because it has overtly pitched Imran Khan against the rest of Pakistan - for the component parties have proven track record and dedicated following in the Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). More importantly, the PDM is targeting what they call the backers or the forces that underpin Imran Khan’s government – a clear pointing towards the powers that be.

At a time when Imran Khan is narcissistically proclaiming that he is democracy [personified] and forcing many to run for history books to find parallels in Louis XIV’s “l’etat, c’est moi” or De Gaulle’s “je suis la France”, the combined opposition has determinedly given out an elaborate protest plan to go from city to city and province to province to project that Khan is not what he feigns to be. Simultaneously the message is being sent to the powers that be that their continued support for the “illegitimate, ill-trained, ill-tempered and ill-performing” PTI government is critically harming the country’s political, financial, administrative and societal fabric and undermining the establishment’s long-term prospects with other major political forces.

The PDM is not the first political alliance the country has seen. Nor will it be the last. In a country where political parties have largely remained personality cults, rifts - factual or fictional - are littered all over the place and may be exploited by any shrewd player. Protest associations wither and blossom like deciduous trees at the first hint of political one-upmanship by leading parties. Issues that run and feed provincial parties have been dramatically different from those that spin the national juggernauts. Call it the tyranny of Pakistan’s political history or circumstantial coming together of the interests that most national and provincial parties are finding themselves lined up against a common opponent.

Politicians from the Punjab have historically sided with the establishment. Nawaz Sharif, once a protégé of the Zia regime, started showing shades of administrative independence the moment he became the premier in 1990. His three incomplete prime ministerial stints tell the story of an ill-equipped politician who tried to lock horns with the proverbial triceratops, lost and earned the universal ire of the generals and the garrison. If a Punjabi politician going rouge on his martial patrons was an inconceivable idea, a Punjabi politician challenging the well-heeled status quo was considered a cardinal sin. Nawaz Sharif has done both. May be that is why many Pashtun and Baloch politicians do not see a problem in sharing a platform with him now. Feeling hard done by the powerful establishment and its partners in government for decades, the Pashtun and Baloch politicians have long said that politics of the country would not move in the right direction unless the Punjab took a stand for the protection of the Constitution and the rights promised therein.

For now, the PDM is feeling confident. Its criticism by the government is understandable. The ministers have picked up on every morsel they could find – attendance numbers, limp enthusiasm, controversial content of some of the speeches, momentary slips of tongue etc. The government is trying to present the demonstrations as if the opposition is pitched against the establishment. Nawaz Sharif’s direct diatribe aimed at the incumbent army chief and the chief of the apex intelligence agency have been projected as an attack on the armed forces. Nawaz Sharif and his allies are calibrating the narrative to pile pressure on natural persons and avoid a head-on collision with the institutions. Political nerves are being tested by systematically upping the ante in a carefully choreographed game of thrones.

But this is not all that’s at stake. Prima facie the task at hand is for the PDM to overthrow the government. A million dollar question is whether they can do it? Suppose they choke city after city and clog road after road and, like Imran Khan, end up marching on Islamabad. Will they be allowed with the current narrative?

Historically the powers that be have been walking in to de-seat the incumbent to placate an unruly opposition pregnant with promises from the powerful. The current situation is different. Will the establishment ease out a premier it helped into power to appease his critics, especially when they are naming names?

For many the big questions is whether the PDM can maintain the momentum. Let’s presume they do. Let’s agree for the argument’s sake that they bring the PTI government down. That’s where the real test would begin. If Imran is ousted before the Senate elections, the system, in all probability, will return to where it was disrupted. Meaning a new election and a return to the PML-N. Will the establishment allow that? If they do, will they agree to Nawaz Sharif’s return to the top slot? If they don’t, will the party leadership agree to be led by Maryam Nawaz instead of Shahbaz Sharif? If Maryam does inherit her father’s party and position, will she not be hounded like Benazir Bhutto?

More importantly, why would the PPP leaders hand over the reins they so want for themselves? Will Bilawal Bhutto and his supporters agree to an understanding that the PML-N should take what was supposedly taken from it? What is in it for the Maulana? What would be his gain? What should the smaller parties expect in the quid pro quo?

And then the biggest questions of all. Why would the game-makers turn into game-changers? What would they gain from the ouster of Imran Khan who has sizeable support? What if he turns on the establishment?

George Orwell once said that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it. Given the narrative that Nawaz Sharif has built for his latest Armageddon against the “backers” of the current government, it does not look he is fighting this battle to lose it. Neither does the other side. Times and challenges have changed. Let’s wait and see who blinks first.

The writer is Resident Editor, The News, Islamabad