The Party Cannot Be over for Imran, At least Not Yet
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the first day of his two-day visit to a country he’d annoyingly shunned visiting last December, Imran Khan (IK) regretted having missed that important conclave of leaders of the Muslim world.

What IK was alluding to was the great faux pas of his in the context of the Summit organized at the Malaysian capital, in December last year. IK, along with Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, and Summit’s host, PM Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia, was a proponent of the idea to put heads of Muslim leaders together, under one roof, to deliberate over myriad shortcomings and challenges of the Muslim world. The idea of such a brain-storming had germinated between these three leaders earlier in September when they were together in NY for the annual UN General Assembly.

That IK developed cold feet on the eve of the KL Summit, and became conspicuous by his absence at it, was articulated by Erdogan in so many words. IK buckled under crude Saudi pressure because the keepers of the Harmain-e-Sharifain (The Two Holiest shrines of Islam in Mecca and Medina) had their own, beleaguered, sense of the conference. They thought its success would rob them of their exalted position in the Ummah. So, they set about sabotaging it and found a willing cohort in IK, who, in his 18-months in power, has provided ample evidence of his being a dutiful minion of theirs.

To be charitable to IK, one may give him a thumbs-up for having the probity and moral grain to apologize for his outrageous absence from that important conclave. It was gracious of him to admit, and contrite for, his appalling diplomatic blunder.

However, his contrition doesn’t paper over an increasingly self-evident symptom of IK being a diffident leader, clearly lacking the ability to take momentous and timely decisions in the interest of his own leadership, as also in the interest of the country he leads. His no-show at the KL Summit not only exposed the Achilles heel of his character as a leader but also embarrassed Pakistan in the comity of its Islamic peers.

In the context of IK and his leadership the climbing graph of diffidence and vacillation is all the more regrettable. He’d made his mark in Pakistan’s macabre politics as a maverick who was determined, from day one, to make a radical departure from a political culture anchored in compromise and expediency. He’d fired the imagination of his followers—whose ranks were initially made of the country’s youth fed up with traditional politicians and their hidebound politics—with his slogan of ‘change’ (Tabdeeli). His full-throttled slogan of being harbinger of a ‘Naya Pakistan’ radically different from the Pakistan all and sundry had grown accustomed fired up his youthful and zealous aficionados.

In power, however, that idealistic prophet of change he promised to be is seen nowhere in action. To the horror of those who haven’t, yet, lost faith in him, the dashing, risk-taking ‘kaptan’ who’d turned the world of cricket topsy-turvy by winning the Cricket World Cup, in 1992, for a dark-horse Pakistan, has disappeared and is proving hard to be re-discovered.

IK’s abject capitulation to the Saudi diktat on KL Summit—which to many pundits was an act of self-immolation or harakiri—has damned his reputation in world affairs and foreign policy. He may find it hard-going to repair that tarnished image, if ever.

But while his falling from grace in foreign relations of Pakistan may be dismissed, for the sake of argument, as distant drums, the alarm bells ringing on the domestic front of his rule will be hard to dismiss or wish away.

That magic touch of finality and decisiveness that had anointed his mark as the most successful captain of Pakistani cricket is missing, sadly, from his stint in leadership.

Of course, he must, to be fair to him, be given the benefit of doubt, to some extent, on the domestic front. He inherited a moth-eaten Pakistan, in the truest sense of the term. It was a badly hemorrhaging economy he was handed over to revive and resuscitate.

The process of repairing that economy and pulling it out of ICU was, by the nature of it, a long-haul. However, shackled to the mountain of tall promises he’d made on the campaign trail, he was in a blind rush to turn things around in a trice.

Someone, among his coterie of advisers and sycophants, should have reminded him that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

By the sheer magnitude of it, the badly crippled economy couldn’t be fixed in a year. Slogans are no substitute for coolly-deliberated plans. He didn’t have a blueprint ready to be put in harness. He was only motivated by his dream to pull Pakistan out of the ruts left behind by the likes of Nawaz and Zardari.

On cue from him, his legion of economic fixers, imported mainly from US, set about fixing the economy without a master plan. As a result of their short-sightedness, his chosen surgeons, or managers, are making heavy weather of their task. The economy, though improving slowly and steadily, is not yet out of the woods. But in the process of pulling it out of a blind-alley, the people of Pakistan are being saddled with a burden they cannot bear. It’s breaking their back, literally and sapping their patience. No wonder, IK’s rating with the people is plummeting and there’s little evidence of an organized effort to stem the rot, except for PM’s bombastic that may have served him well as a leader-in-opposition but is proving counter-productive as PM.

IK’s handling of the economy—when evaluated from the perspective of the common man—is full of contradictions and diffidence. His sloganeering against vested interest and cartels in economy had won him legions of supporters among the have-nots of Pakistan. But what they see, in practice, is just the opposite of his protestations of yore. He has surrendered to vested interest and cartels of big business like an apologist. So much so that NAB finds its hands tied to go after those whose corrupt business practices are a drain on the economy and are, palpably, anti-people and anti-consumers.

While the net has been loosened to allow the big fish to get out of it in safety, the noose is tightening around the neck of the common man. Tax collection targets are regularly missed. That IK’s chosen messiah to improve working at FBR, Shabbar Zaidi, has gone on indefinite leave, ‘on medical grounds’ is evidence of his frustration with FBR’s old-guards and their well-known shenanigans of corruption.

IK’s diffidence and prevarications are most notable on the front he’d himself touted as his mission number one: the crusade against corruption. Nowhere else has his track record so many black spots as in his avowed fight—and failure—to stem the tide of endemic corruption in Pakistan. He may still be spotless as far as his personal integrity and uprightness is concerned. But that cannot be a foil for his frequent compromises with the corrupt, especially the sharks in Pakistan’s cesspool of corruption.

There couldn’t be a more damning footnote to IK’s botched performance as an anti-corruption crusader than the fact that both Zardari and Nawaz Sharif—the doyens of the corrupt cabal in Pakistan are home, scot-free. One is home, literally, in Karachi, and the other is making merry on medical grounds in London. IK can at best still fulminate against them but is seen nowhere near nabbing them for good or forcing them to pay up for their massive loot of Pakistan.

The same damning diffidence seems to have sequestered the political alliance that allows him room to breathe. Because of his proven weakness that he wilts under pressure, his coalition partners—inglorious and shady characters, most of them, no doubt—have started flexing their muscles.

MQM, never one to forgo a chance to jack up their price for loyalty, have left the Cabinet, though only half-way. Khalid Maqbool Siddiqi is out, but NasimFarogh, the barrister presiding over the Law Ministry, hangs on. It’s obvious that MQM, past masters at exacting their pound of flesh, with all the fat on it, see their chance to blackmail IK and have quickly taken off their gloves.

The Chaudhris of Gujrat are doubling up on their own game to twist IK’s arm as much as they can to demand a return on their investment far in excess of its worth.

These Chaudhris, who cut their teeth under Musharraf in the art of punching above their weight are demanding far more from IK in return for their continued alliance with him. Numbers make their game crystal-clear. In the National Assembly, of 342 members, their Q-League has only 5 seats. But they have been given one berth in the IK cabinet.

In the Punjab Assembly’s total seats of 371, Q-League has just 10 members but have 2 ministers in Punjab cabinet. On top of it, the younger and more active Chaudhry, Pervez Elahi—who was once being groomed as PM under their mentor, Musharraf—has the exalted position of Punjab Assembly’s Speaker. However, sensing IK’s vulnerability on account of his wafer-thin majority, that allows him to stay in power, the Chaudhris are now demanding much more than they deserve. Their knives are out for the kill.

So, on the face of it, IK is in deep trouble and hangs there, in power, by the skin of his teeth.

But all is still not lost, for a variety of reasons. For one, both N-League and PPP are in disarray. N-League has palace intrigues on its hands and PPP is down in the pits because their crafty leader, Asif Zardari, is as good as a spent bullet. IK should thank his stars that the main opposition to him has no intent to get together, any time soon, to challenge his wobbly rule.

For another, the powerful ‘establishment’ whose foot-prints are as prominent on the current political landscape as they were in governments gone by, has no better alternative to IK in sight. Besides, Kaptan has done their bidding without demur, unlike Nawaz who, in his puffed-up sense of his position had foolishly burnt his bridges with the kingmakers. The alacrity of IK in getting the National Assembly and the Senate on board to legislate on the dotted lines for him, and them, is a case in point.

But the breathing room given to him, is all the more reason and compulsion on him, to get his act together without wasting any more time. It’s high time for him to rearrange and recalibrate his political assets. Foremost amongst his priorities should be a heavy weeding out of sycophants and hangers on from the coterie of advisers around him. They have been a big factor in the erosion of his trust with the people of Pakistan. The time to arrest the slide is now. He may not be able to play out his innings to the end if he didn’t put his shoulders to this emergency without further ado; a second innings would be a distant dream. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)