Opinion

Imran Khan: A Leader of Change or Chance – 2
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

“The primary obstacle-in the way of lasting changes in our companies or countries is a conflict that’s built into our brains…our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind - that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body (change through effort), the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookies… loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort”. Chip Heath & Dan Heath in “Switch”.

Before mentioning his famous nine qualities of a leader, Lee Iacocca warns of cronyism, a disease that has deeply seeped in the Pakistan government and culture. Sons, sons-in-law; daughters and daughters-in-law; uncles, aunts, mothers and sisters, and friends, and add to these the well-buttered cookies of kick-backs: all stand lined up, wanting to benefit from the leader-to-be without any fear and shame.

Tenure in power is a “Loot and Run”, rat-race, not an opportunity to serve. The Founding Fathers of America were so convinced of the viciousness of the disease of cronyism that no President would ever steep to such a thing that they didn’t even bother to prohibit it in the Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, wrote that any President “would be both ashamed and afraid” to appoint cronies, or these “ass-kissers,” as he called them.

Will Imran Khan resist the pressure likely to be exercised on him when the call comes from his nephews, friends, newly inducted electables, etc., is a matter yet to be seen. It is still fresh in our minds that the door to cricket did not open on him automatically. Connections always count in Pakistan. Already the likes of Mahmood Shah have begun whispering in his ears as to what he should do and whom he should receive or not receive at the airport. A little guidance from Machiavelli won’t harm him when he says, “A Prince, therefore, should always take counsel, but when he wants and not when others want it; on the contrary, he should discourage everyone from counseling him about anything unless he asks it of them”. Here are Lee’s nine C’s, and a litmus test of a great leader.

Curiosity, by this he means the ability of the leader to listen to people outside of the “Yes sir” crowd in his inner circle, and not like President George W. Bush who bragged about never reading a newspaper even. “I just scan the newspaper.” A leader who never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale.
Creativity. A leader should be willing to try something different by thinking outside the box. President Bush depended too much on his “instincts’, a risky trend. Change comes, but the leadership is about managing this change. Late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto followed his instincts and did not plan much to handle the changes that he had initiated in quick succession - in education, banking, industry, etc. Imran Khan also has a soft corner for people who are gifted to ‘peep into the future’. Mian Bashir may have played a major role in his life, but the future of a country depends more on the direction you give it, and not on the insight of the astrologers.
Communication: By this Lee Iacocca means, not sprouting sound verbal bites, but facing the reality and telling the truth. Bad leaders, like the current ruling leadership in Pakistan, instead of fixing the problems are heard either singing in chorus the anthem of the ‘accomplishments’ of the government, or are busy in convincing the people that things are not really as bad as they are being painted by the media. The wolf is at the door, and they like the boy in the story, are still not crying wolf.
Character: it means knowing the right from the wrong, and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The present leadership in Pakistan has the power, but it shows little regard for the grievous people. They are busy in making hay while the sun shines.
Courage: Swagger is not courage; tough talk is not courage, terrorizing people through the mafia is not courage. Courage is not about being macho or bravado. Real courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
Conviction: It means having fire in the belly, having a passion to do something for the progeny. The current ruling leadership in Pakistan would have been fired long ago for it lacks vision and conviction.
Charisma: Having a charisma does not mean being flashy. It is a quality that makes people follow you, emulate you. It’s the ability to inspire. People follow a leader if they trust him. It is not like saying to Sara Paula, “You are beautiful.”
Competent: It means that a real leader knows what he is doing. More than that he has got to surround himself with people who know what they are doing. Surrounding one with people who possess fake degrees, who indulge in corruption, and who make false promises with the public, speaks for the incompetence of the main leadership.
Common Sense: “If you do not know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you’ll never make it”, was an advice Lee’s boss once gave to him. Common sense comes when the people in position stay in touch with the real world.

Six of these nine C’s - namely, character, courage, conviction, charisma, curiosity and creativity are present in Imran Khan. His book, his performance in cricket as captain, and his philanthropic social work bear testimony. He is somewhat ambiguous on the remaining three C’s: common sense, communication and competence. A leader’s words and actions ought to match. It is, therefore, very important that in the public meetings, looking at the number of people, he should not lose sight of this fact and say words that are hollow and that sound cheap. Pleasing the crowd should not mean lowering oneself in one’s ideology.

Dr. Mohammad Taqi, a veritable columnist, in his article, “No He Khan’t”, Pakistan link November 17, highlights some of his public utterances which sound like, “hollow sloganeering”. “Imran Khan wants to ‘help the US get out of Afghanistan fast’ and plans to hand over FATA to the traditional tribal elders (Maliks). This is his magic wand, waving which will make terrorism and terrorist safe heavens disappear. One wonders if he has the faintest idea that thousands of tribal Maliks have been slaughtered in cold blood by the very savages he wants to negotiate with”.

Imran Khan’s overt softness towards Taliban, and his wanting a truce with “ the good, the bad and the ugly Taliban” as says Dr. Taqi, has also been a matter of great concern for the scribe this article. An ambiguous stance on such a vital issue casts a shadow on Imran Khan’s ability to tackle the problem. Did he forget what a sampling of their likes in the form of Islamic Jamiat-i-Tuleba, (IJT) had done to him at the campus of the Punjab University in November, 2007?

In his own words as recorded in his book on page 2, “Everyone on the campus of the University is scared of them. Once known for their ideological views and great discipline, they appear to have degenerated into a kind of mafia or fascist group operating inside the University bearings guns and beating people up… no government dared tackle them.” It is in my personal knowledge as in-charge of Students Affairs for 22 years at a famous college, how violence perceptibly became an integral part of the student union elections once the IJT began patronizing a section of them. Religion and politics make a dangerous mix. “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,” says Blaise Pascal.

Imran Khan proclaims to end corruption in 90 days; intends to declare four emergencies - the education emergency, the power emergency, the tax emergency , the security emergency - etc. “He even vows to end the highhandedness of the land officers (patwaris), but says not a single word about the fortunes amassed by the Generals at home and abroad, or how to deal with the Feudal lords”.. He provides no clue, nor does he highlight any process by following which he intends to accomplish all the above. The task appears to be becoming hard with the kind of people he is bedding with.

Christina Lamb in her book, “Waiting for Allah”, describes the nature of corruption which Imran Khan intends to end in 90 days in Pakistan on page 178. “Corruption may have been no greater under the Bhutto (Benazir) (1990) government, but it was undoubtedly more blatant. One American banker said, ‘Certainly there’s always been corruption but it took on grotesque proportions with respect to Asif Zardari. There was a full investigative report published on corruption in the Newsline of August 1990, under the title of, ‘Take the Money and Run’,… there is no middle-class in Sindh and the reason is that only the waderas get the water…one jail Superintendent said, ‘the landlord is king of the village. It he wants to kidnap a girl, he can. People will thieve for him. In return the Zamindar provides him Red Label (wine bottle), women and money and send him mangoes to suggest that we are on the same social footing…” This was 22 years ago. Now it is hundred times more entrenched in people. Imran Khan offers no logical and viable solutions how he is going to get the country out of this mess of extremism, corruption, and moral morbidity.

The one obviously less pronounced element in Imran Khan’s character - the most essential one otherwise - had been the absence of Prudence. It is good that he appears to have made up on it. Now, Imran Khan, undoubtedly, has glory, chance, character and prudence, all present in him. Imran Khan is also perfectly credible when he concludes his book with the sentence. “For the first time, I feel Tehreek-e-Insaf is the idea whose time has come.”

Machiavelli, centuries ago, had written that people forget the death of their fathers more quickly than they forget the loss of their patrimonies (inheritance). Inheritance here can mean, the tangible benefits, self-esteem, self-respect, safety and security and equal rights that a good regime strives to provide to them. What legacy this regime is going to leave behind is anybody’s guess. Virtue shines best when it gets contrasted with cruelty, injustice and evil. Virtue never exists in a vacuum; it co-exists side by side with the evil, and too much of evil often serves as a shock to virtue. Imran Khan is shining brighter now, not because he got any better re-polished, (he had been there in politics since 1996), or that he has hit another PhD. It is because others have fallen so irredeemably low. All of a sudden, under new circumstances, he appears to be standing like a Titan; a Gulliver in the midst of Lilliputians.

If there is one field in which everyone in Pakistan can be accused of over-indulgence, it is politics. But, it is not the politics as a system that they discuss, it is the politicians that come under their purview. And no country on earth can pride itself for having produced a more rotten crop of them than Pakistan. Unfortunately, our politicians have been endemically deficit on what we call character. They never have been able to overcome their greed and lust once in power. What they always missed had been, “Zarf”, a sense of self-sufficiency, a true sense of honor. Allama Iqbal puts it the best way,

(A thinking that gets embittered due to the unevenness of the circumstances - such a thinking carries in itself the traces of beggary)

You may believe it or it, but the fact is that all of these Lords and Kings are in fact beggars)

Politicians in Pakistan have always craved for positions, without encountering any accountability on performance, and they have never been able to get over their sense of “gaddai”. They became wealthy, but not rich as they lacked character, or what we call, “class”; a true sense of contentment and containment. A man of ‘class’ is a person who is never scared as he is always sure-footed of his inner moral strength. He is always willing to learn from his mistakes because he is God-fearing; he is never arrogant as he is always humble and well mannered. People of class are the real people because they even when in poverty are rich; people of class always have the discipline to stay within their own skins as they consciously make efforts to desist putting on false airs. People of class can walk with the kings, and yet keep their honor intact, and their heads high. They can also walk with the crowds most comfortably, without ever losing the common touch with them.

A sense of honor and self-sufficiency is an inborn gift, because it can never be acquired, neither by amassing wealth, nor by installing oneself in a position of power. It just grows within a person, like a plant, inch by inch. Our honor always speaks out to us, only we have to be alive to listen to it. The present lot of politicians does not belong to that class of people. Their leading trait in this field is to cow down people with force, fear and fraud This precisely is one reason that their craze for corruption remains open-ended, un-satiated.

Imran Khan, being a “Pathan Bacha” as would say Hasan Nisar, and as he portrays himself in his book, it is safe to say that he is a man of genuine integrity, well-groomed by his parents and is a person with a touch of “class”. He does not possess that “air of beggary” which Allama Iqbal so eloquently talks about. In his book, on page 176, he writes, “In terms of quality of life, political success is of no benefit to me, but for the likes of Zardari and Sharif, losing power might mean losing everything - their wealth, their homes, their status, their privileges and potentially their liberty - since many of them deserve to be in jail.”

People accuse him of being arrogant, but the good thing in being so is that his disdain is not directed towards the common people. His book provides sufficient written proof how he feels for the poor and for the destitute. He is willing to learn and grow as he himself writes on page 197: “The first thing to understand with failure is that there is no point in making excuses - there are no listeners, as they say, failures is an orphan, and you are alone”. “Another great lesson in building the hospital was overcoming my pride and bringing my ego under control.” And on Page 156: “I had learned this as a cricket captain to discipline the team all I had to do was to ensure that the senior players did not break the rules - the juniors automatically fell into line…” page 171. Great leaders are humble too.

These are great lessons that Imran Khan has learned as a great sportsman and as a philanthropist, and he has manifestly provided the tangible proofs to silence the skeptics. But politics, let us admit, is an entirely different field. It thrives on an ostentatious and fluffy demeanor and on false promises. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”, says Shakespeare. Power has the tendency to corrupt even the very good people.

Mr. Saleem Saifi sums up Imran Khan’s popularity in his column, Jirga, in such words. People’s sudden liking for him is less due to any insightfulness or wisdom, it is more due to Mian Nawaz Sharif’s and President Zardari’s abysmal blunders, the leadership’s incompetence, egoism, nepotism and cronyism.

For Saifi, people are opting for Imran as a third party option. The people are lined up to join him on account of five reasons: one, are the people who are known for acting as stooges to a hidden hand, always waiting for the signal, telling them when and how to act; second, are the people who are exceedingly good at mood reading of the power-to-be. They are quick to notice the slightest change in the political weather-cock. They know a perfect sense of timings, and know when to change the sides; third, are the people who stay well informed about the changes taking place in the psyche of the voters; they have the knack to adjust themselves accordingly; fourth, are the people who have a back-pack of grievances against their native parties, and had failed to find a place of their choice in their parent parties; and fifth, are the people who got hurt, and were bruised by the arrogance of the party leadership. So they join the new party more out of revenge than due to any noble motivation.

Nazir Naji laughs at the illusion of a tsunami which Imran Khan so fondly talks about in his public addresses, when he says, “It is a ‘tsunami’, but without the trace of a drop of water”, “It is a revolution”, but without a shred of evidence of any change.” PTI, according to Naji is a “Pia Man Bhai Party”. Ridiculing the assertions made by Imran Khan at the Karachi public meeting, Naji says, “Some members were so much infused with the enthusiasm that the apprehension was that they might not pronounce that the Quaid has also condescended to join the PTI, or that the Quaid has instructed the public to join the PTI”. One can understand from which quarters such a cynicism is emanating. It is a good sign for Imran Khan as the more these mercenaries of intellect vomit against him, the better and brighter his chances would be to sweep in the next elections.

Pakistan has been ruled by feudal lords, accountants, military generals, industrialists and men of law, but never by a sportsman. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Prime Minister of England in 1963-64, had been the only PM who played first class cricket; Imran Khan could also be the first cricketer to be in that office in Pakistan. The search of the people of Pakistan for a leader with a “class” had never been so genuine, and so urgent than it is now. In the words of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “And so we wistfully prayed, for a consummate end to our painful search.” Let us hope that their prayers are about to be granted. This time the Nation gets a real leader, a leader who has “Zurf”, and who is endowed with a true sense of self-sufficiency. Their only wish is that he is upright and honest.