A week has passed since PTI’s supporters flooded Minar-e-Pakistan
in Lahore, but the critics are still going strong in their onslaught against
Imran Khan. For a whole day after the jalsa the English dailys relented in
their attacks on Khan, and congratulated him on proving that his party was as
capable of amassing physical supporters as virtual ones. Since that day,
however, his detractors seem to have redoubled their efforts to denounce him.
Of course, the traditional criticism of having only Facebook
supporters having lost its teeth, others are being repeated with increased
zeal. I’ll try to analyse some of these. The first one that was doing the
rounds before the Lahore jalsa is that Imran Khan is in cahoots with the
establishment. The fact that he did not bring up the issue of the military during
his speech is being touted as absolute confirmation of this. The fact of the matter is that Imran Khan
stands a slim chance as it is. He is already punching well above his weight in
taking on the PMLN in Punjab and the other major parties elsewhere. What people
need to realize is that the military establishment is a force that even the
great Zulfiqar Bhutto was unable to tame. The only way to bring the
establishment under check is to have a political government that is has such strong
populist roots that it cannot be cowed into submission. For this to happen the
politicians involved need to have unimpeachable records – an art they have been
unable to master. Simply put, the only civilian government that can take on the
establishment is one that can call on the people to defend it. A corrupt, inept
government has no hope of doing so. An as
yet unelected force that is already in no shortage of enemies would have to be
suicidal or insane to start railing against this force at a mass rally during
election time. The most anyone can practically hope for from the PTI is an
acknowledgement of this problem; an acknowledgement that is forthcoming both in
Imran Khan’s book and in several interviews. Incidentally, it is spectacularly amusing to
see political parties also raising this concern since all of them have their
roots in the military establishment as well - PPP, PMLN and MQM all have their
roots in patronage from one military government or the other.
Furthermore, the military establishment itself is an odd
creature. Through the 50s, right up to the 90s, it was criticized for being a
puppet in the hands of the United States. It was accused of exercising absolute
control over its indigenous population while minting money as a mercenary force
for the US. Throughout Pakistan’s history, the army has always been much closer
to the US than any civilian government could ever hope to be (Of course, this
doesn’t mean that the civilian governments weren’t falling over themselves to
prove their loyalty to the US, it just means they never succeeded in making themselves
indispensible). These days, the image of
the establishment is very different. It is seen as an ultra-nationalist,
pan-Islamic, anti- American force that wants to take over the world. In essence,
it is seen to be intent on fighting an ideological war. Of course, the actions
of the Musharraf regime were in direct conflict to these assertions. The
Musharraf regime was exercising the traditional pre-Islamization role of the
establishment in fighting the US’s wars in exchange for money, at the same time
silencing detractors. At that point in time, Imran Khan was the only one to
call his government on this issue, and he still hasn’t changed his stance.
A trivial issue raised against Khan is whether he will be
able to translate his showing in Lahore into actual votes. If he can get them
to come to Minar-e-Pakistan, he can get them to the polling booth. I really
cannot fathom how this could even be raised as a serious issue. There was a mad
rush during the time of the rally to get votes registered, and it appears
pretty obvious to me that the next election may have one of the highest
turnouts in history. Or am I missing something?
The more serious charges against Khan are made by
sullen-faced stalwarts of the PMLN. Khan has not established a set policy as to
how he is going to go about making the changes he promises. One must confess
that this is the most troubling aspect of PTI’s campaign and one hopes they
will sort this out sooner rather than later. The oft-repeated argument here is
that problems of corruption are not as simple as PTI makes them out to be. It
is not good enough that he wants to
make a difference. The answer, of course, is no it isn’t. But it is the
absolute minimum requirement. Surely a government that has no intention of
rectifying the system is worse than one without a readily available plan. I
think it is high time that the Pakistani public stopped trying to get the system
to work in spite of bad governance and, for once, faced the menace head on. It’s
really high time we started demanding more from our politicians in terms of honesty.
In this regard, at his worse, Khan can set the bar at an absolute zero for
future politicians.
Another charge against Imran Khan is that he is making
compromises that will ensure that he is unable to deliver on his promises. The
main line of argument here is that he is inducting too much of the old guard to
be able to bring about a change. I can only assume that anyone who makes this
assertion is going to be voting for the PTI anyway, as they already see the
entire old guard as corrupt and inept – at least with Khan, they will be under
new management. At the same time it is interesting to note that Khan is accused
of not having any experienced politicians in his party. A catch 22 situation if
there ever was one. What the PTI is faced with is the problem of trying to
remain clean while performing in a political system riddled with corruption.
This is more the fault of our system than the PTI. Nobody should be under any
illusions; Khan will have to compromise at some level if he is to have any hope
of coming to power. The question is, how much? Will the compromise turn the PTI
into another PPP or will Khan be able to keep a check on his rank and file? It
is a mammoth task, but one definitely worth undertaking. Many Pakistanis have
given up hope of ever seeing a prosperous country. The mass exodus out of the country
is testament to this, so it doesn’t take a genius to predict that the odds are
phenomenally against Imran Khan. But the PTI has injected new life into the
political system and captured the imagination of young people. One can only
hope that Khan can amass a backing that ensures his subordinates are unable to
overwhelm him.
One great thing about the demonstration of PTI’s popularity
is that it has jolted the incumbent parties. The PMLN, being challenged only by
the spectacularly maligned PPP, had fallen into a stupor, but the fact that the
PTI is now nibbling at their heels means that they have jumped into action.
Suddenly they are falling over themselves to clarify their financial accounts
and demonstrate the good governance they had once been so proud of. By making
such an issue out of corruption, the PTI has put immense pressure on urban
parties such as the PMLN to avoid tainted politicians.
Finally, the one stance of Imran Khan that seems to ruffle
the most feathers among the writers of English blogs – the Taliban. I will not
even bother to clarify the fact that he does not in fact condone terrorism. If
you don’t know that already, anything I will say will be a waste of time. But
let me start with a sentence I just read in an article on Pakistan Today: “Is playing music all that is required to
prove your ‘liberal’ ‘leftist’ credentials?” A good question, to which my
answer would be yes, it would appear so, because the people who profess to
being part of the liberal, leftist cadre in our society seem to be exactly that
shallow. These labels seem to have no meaning at all except that they want to
be allowed to have a good time. These people don’t stand for social welfare,
they don’t stand for social equality, they don’t seem to be asking for
alleviation of income disparity or protesting the damaging effects of
globalization, or even protecting the environment. They have no qualms with
violations of international law or human rights. If anything, they seem to be
spectacularly trigger-happy for people who claim to be progressive thinkers.
Their first instinct at any issue is to go to war. They seem to think that the
rest of the country can be pummeled into liberal, leftist thought (whatever
that means in this day and age). This is their equivalent of spreading
democracy around the world.
We need to accept the fact that the Taliban are a not just a
product of religious brain-washing, but also a reaction to decades of
disenfranchisement. The country has let, and is continuing to let its most
vulnerable citizens down. The solution cannot be to go on an all-out war
against the population we have spurned. The way out is to try and rehabilitate
the people we have antagonized to this degree. They need to be weaned away from
the most extreme religious views. This is not an immediate solution – it will
take decades. But it has to be tried, and tried again, unless we want to get
sucked into an all-out civil war. We need to remember that all governments have
a penchant for painting all opposition as intransigent. It is a trick they seem
to have picked up from the Americans. Remember the godless communists and the
Muslim extremists? In Pakistan we too had the treacherous Bengalis who wanted
to break the country. We took up a military operation against them and look how
well that turned out. Or the Balochis, they too were insurgents bent upon
breaking up the country. We bombed them, and invited others to do the same, now
we’re picking up the pieces.
Incidentally, it never occurred to anyone to start a
military operation against the Taliban until 9/11. Even then, it was done out
of fear of the US reprisal rather than because they were an immediate threat to
us. We saw the US and the Taliban, and decided we could take on the Taliban
much more easily than the US and went for it. The fault of the Taliban is that
they didn’t die out. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that we were fighting
some war for the security of the whole world. Sitting in Lahore, I confess I
may have a simplistic view of things. But with the limited information coming
out of the affected regions, it is difficult to get an unbiased view. I do
suspect, however, that the PTI’s performance in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa would be a
good indicator to how accurate they are on their problem assessment.
To close, I will confess I am cautious in my support of the
PTI, but I like to believe its on the right track. I realize Imran Khan’s
claims are idealistic. But I fail to see how having an honest idealist will not
have a positive effect on the governance of the country. If it does not manage to eradicate the menace
of corruption in our country, it would at least attempt to curb it to
manageable levels. It would restore the lost confidence in the government
systems, which is in itself a cause for much of our woes.
Of course, Imran Khan could turn out to be a complete scam; a
power-monger or a closet Mr. Ten Percent. I have no crystal ball to check whether
he goes home after his rallies and practices his evil laugh. Conversely, he
could be too much of an idealist and step on too many toes all at once, because
let’s face it nobody in our power structure wants a truly incorruptible leader.
Not the army with its fingers in so many pies, not the industrialists who are
dodging their taxes, not the feudal lord, not the patwaris and thaanedaars he
openly denounced in Lahore, not even the media that is getting its funding from
so many different vested interests. If Imran Khan tried to be as revolutionary
as he says he is, he probably wouldn’t make it to the assembly alive.
Where self-centered pragmatism has failed us so
many times, perhaps it’s time for a bit of selfless idealism. There is one
aspect of the PTI’s campaign that really bothers me though. Imran Khan is not
the last hope for Pakistan. I will support him, and if he fails, I will try
again!
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