The ongoing anti-government protests in Pakistan have crossed twenty days and all the difficulties have failed to demoralize the enthusiastic protestors. The capital city of Islamabad is experiencing continuous shower from many days and the protestors have managed to survive this weather without any proper shelter. This is not the only problem they are facing; police and other security forces have also tightened the control around them.

This all started on the day of independence of this country, on August 14th when the leader of PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf), the famous ex-cricketer and philanthropist of the country Imran Khan announced to start protests to bring down the government of Prime Minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif. He accused the Sharif family of mass corruption and being a part of an establishment that keeps entering and exiting the power but in all these years, they have done nothing for the nation and the country except to make their family wealthier.

At the same time, the ex-MNA of Parliament and leader of Pakistan Awami Tehreek (National Movement of Pakistan), Maulana Tahir-ul-Qadiri also announced to launch protests against the government on the same day. He was of the view that present government is not addressing the problems of poor and marginalized classes and thus it has lost its aim for existence.

Both the leaders announced to start their march from Lahore that would eventually reach to capital Islamabad. Both the parties had a long list of demands but they were equivocal that Prime Minister should step down and a new and representative government should be established. As it was a huge march so it took almost a week until the members of the march reached to Islamabad.

There were different views about the fate of this protesting march. However, majority of public and political experts were of the view that these marches will not be able to withstand the delay and soon, people will scatter and protest will die naturally. However, even after twenty days, the protestors are still in Islamabad and they have not moved even an inch backward from their demands. When these protests were announced, government was already afraid and made its efforts to abolish them.

Many offers were made to the protesting leaders and many rounds of negotiations were made but they all failed and the march kept advancing towards the capital city. Later on, these two groups got merged and when they announced the civil disobedience and the workers of the parties were ordered to advance and capture some of the important buildings of the country like the Parliament House and the Prime Minister’s secretariat, severe clashes were reported between police and the protestors which left dozens of protesters deceased while hundreds more of them were injured and carried to the hospitals.

In the meantime, almost all the political parties of the country made their efforts to arbitrate between government and the protestors and in this regard, many shuttle visits were made between the two camps but none of them were successful.

These protests have been termed historic and exceptionally different by a number of political experts. First important aspect was the true spirit of its participants. In the beginning, it was thought that the protestors’ spirit would soon diminish and it would not last more than ten days but it is really astonishing that even after twenty days, thousands of protestors of both the parties are still in Islamabad and they have vowed to remain there until their leaders don’t order them to do otherwise. At the same time, these protestors have shown remarkable resistance to stay in a protesting sit-in, ignoring all the hardships of weather, lack of food and other facilities and fear of the police reaction.

Large numbers of people who supported Imran Khan but were doubtful about his strategy to draw such large number of masses into the streets have now started agreeing with his strategy and this massive sit-in and protest have made the government really frightened. At the same time, these protests have become a sign of hope for large number of deprived classes of Pakistani society. They now agree with Imran Khan that the present genre of politicians is only there to serve their own benefits and they have never worked for the betterment of people.

They have also seen a hope in form of Imran Khan that he is the only person courageous enough to withstand this strong and firm status-quo of Pakistani politics when a couple of political parties, headed by some influential families, keep on coming to power in turns and they have never shown any performance in past as well. There were also present some old parties like MQM, ANP and PMAP who believed that this system of bi-lateral party rule should be changed but they were never able to challenge the strong influence of these two parties. But now, they have in fact learned a lesson that if they show perseverance and stand firm in their cause, they may come to change the scenario.

The protests are still in progress and we are not sure as what would be the end result but it is for sure that these protests have given hope for all the deprived and oppressed public in different parts of the world that they can get their rights by standing firm in their cause.