October 30 looms ever closer and as PTI stalwarts gear themselves up to shut down the nation’s capital, PTI’s lawyers are preparing themselves for another significant date, October 20, when the Supreme Court takes up the petitions to disqualify the Prime Minister, his son-in-law and Ishaq Dar.

Make no mistake, what PTI refers to as fact (that the Prime Minister was involved in money laundering, tax evasion and other fraudulent practices) is only a theory at best; and one of many at that.

It remains to be seen whether PTI gets what it wants from the paths chosen. The Supreme Court route is not likely to lead to the PM’s disqualification, not least because from start to finish, there is no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. If there was, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) would have been the first to point this out.

Even though Imran Khan would like to disagree, strong suspicion is not the same thing as cold hard evidence, and the court will draw that distinction with ease – much like the ECP did when the PTI Chief was wholeheartedly convinced that the previous elections were rigged enough to steal his mandate from him.

Then there’s the protest and the promise to shut down the nation’s capital. Getting protesters in numbers to Islamabad will not be a problem for PTI, nor will be the effort to shut down the entry/exit points to the capital initially. But will the government let them? And even if it does, how long can the party keep this up?

The most likely scenario, for October 30 currently, is that PTI will show up to Islamabad with all their numbers in tow and will manage to shut the capital down for a brief period. TV screens will be dominated by the image of Imran Khan aboard a truck making speeches, and green and red flags being waved about in every direction. The economy will obviously suffer a shock from the nation’s capital not being able to conduct business on a Monday (provided the protest lasts longer than a day), residents of Islamabad will be inconvenienced, but then, normality will eventually be restored.

In fact, if the Azadi March and the politics of PTI are anything to go by; this is the new normal. Protest politics, heavy-handed rhetoric and attempts to bring the Prime Minister down seem to have become a part of the state’s affairs, and the PML-N’s lethargic efforts to counter them makes it look like it doesn’t mind this too much at all.