The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) continues showing signs of fracturing as legislators prevaricate in the process of resigning from the National Assembly (NA). On Wednesday, 25 PTI Members of the National Assembly (MNAs) appeared in parliament to confirm their resignations in person to Speaker Ayaz Sadiq but were refused to meet him individually as required by the NA rules of procedure. Instead they demanded he meet them collectively in the NA lounge. The PTI said that it was not allowing its legislators to meet the Speaker individually lest some of them decided to “change their loyalty”. One PTI MNA told journalists: “The number of MNAs opposing resignation from the NA is increasing.” A group of PTI MNAs has said that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly must be dissolved in line with the party’s stated policy if they are expected to hand in their resignations, while three have simply refused to resign. Around 20 provincial PTI legislators are reportedly reluctant to hand in their resignations as well. On Tuesday a delegation from the Jamaat-e-Islaami (JI) met PM Nawaz Sharif and advised him not to accept the PTI’s resignations as it could destabilise the country, especially with security problems in KP. The JI, which is in coalition with the PTI in KP, said that if the PTI wants to resign from the Assembly, it is within its rights to do so, but that does not necessitate the JI’s resignations as well. The other way for the PTI to surrender its NA position is for individual members to not attend more than 40 consecutive NA days of business after which their seats may be vacated. However, some PTI representatives continue to appear in parliament and at standing committee meetings where they have disrupted regular proceedings with slogans against the Prime Minister (PM). Responding to the Speaker’s concerns, PTI Vice-Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi said: “We are not students of a school that we should go one by one.” A tacit debate over the limits of law or in this case procedure continues to dog the resignations issue. Democracy in the PTI’s view precludes any procedural limits. The PTI assertion of an absolute moral position was from the beginning an attempt to distinguish between ‘popular’ sovereignty and the sovereignty of parliament, which it claims is unrepresentative of the people. If it had proved these claims with undeniable evidence of systematic rigging, the absolute moral position would have been stronger. Instead the party has enunciated what legal expert J D Hodson in the Ethics of Legal Coercion terms “commonly held feelings of ‘intolerance indignation and disgust’”, which gained a response from sections of the public. Rationally this position is criticised because it fails to ask whether ‘feelings’ are merely prejudices when they are held without empirical substance. Empirically, Imran Khan’s speeches provide ample evidence of appeals to preconceived notions and prejudices. What is more disturbing is that in contradiction to its implicit position, the PTI continues to enforce limits on the behaviour of its members through the procedural requirements of party membership. Procedural limits apply to the PTI internally but not to the PTI in relation to the rest of the world, i.e. PTI members cannot visit the Speaker individually without breaching party discipline but the party takes exception to parliamentary discipline. Underlying the contradiction is the idea of ‘exceptionalism’ meaning that the PTI perceives itself as above political rules because of the loftiness of its goals and its ‘moment’ in history. If this were true there should be no concern about its members ‘changing their loyalty’. However, as their prevarication indicates, this is not the case. By its own admission the PTI is forcing some of its MNAs to resign, which makes the Speaker’s concerns valid. The dissonance between the party’s enunciation of democracy and its internal ‘repression’ is leading to increasing disillusionment as more legislators drift away from the party’s stance, which appears calculated more for melodramatic effect rather than political principle or integrity. PTI MNAs are certainly not school children. Hence the party should not treat them as such. *