Has Imran Khan Shot Himself in the Foot?
By Salahuddin Haider
Karachi, Pakistan
As Pakistan moves from crisis to crisis, the focus seems to have shifted from prime minister Nawaz Sharif to the future of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan. Has he doomed himself by shooting himself in the foot? Is he in some kind of dilemma? Or would he manage to extricate himself from the present impasse and be back on the road to success? These, and many more, are some of the crucial questions about the fate of a person, who shot to overnight popularity, but now appears lost in midstream.
An unbalanced view will be rather uncharitable, but a two-week earlier announcement from the chief of the Tehrik-i-Insaaf to concentrate more on improving and developing Khyber Pukhtoonkhawa (KPK) where his party is in power for well over 20 months now, came as a rude shock, not only for party-men, supporters, and sympathizers, but for the general masses as well.
By staging four-months of sit-ins at Islamabad’s high security zone --from August to December 16 -- Imran had raised his image enormously. He had almost begun to be idolized by most Pakistanis, disappointed, and disillusioned by Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, whose misrule since the 2008 elections, has driven people to support even an undemocratic rule, if it helped them to recover from the present morass and prolonged mis-governance
Consensus has developed that his three-point plan to project a new image of the north-western province, deserved appreciation but it simultaneously gave rise to a debate as to whether this strategy would help the PTI chief to retain his place as a national leader.
His boldness to challenge a well entrenched government had jolted the ruling Muslim League party of Sharif to the hilt, and though the latter managed to rally the parliament behind him, he never looked comfortable against an opponent, who had taken the country by storm. Sharif must have heaved a sigh of relief by Khan’s latest press conference, but he should really be pondering as to whether he can really have a chance to be in peace at least for a couple of years.
Hardly one crisis passes when another emerges from phoenix, the latest being the petrol shortages, which has badly tarnished the N-League image in the public. The irony is that he faces the worst ever crisis of his political career in his home province of the Punjab, where agitation had been so vociferous and abrupt because of petrol shortages and persistent absence of electricity, gas and water for daily use that the government had to spend sleepless nights.
This was a golden opportunity for Khan to strike at his formidable rival, but the post-Peshawar scene( when 142 children were massacred in an army public school) stood in his way. His marriage with BBC weather girl, Reham Khan, caused consternation for no fault of his own. The media built such a hype that Khan, visiting the army public school to sympathize with the students surviving the mass killing of 16th December, had to face a hostile crowd of grief-stricken parents, shouting “go Imran go” slogans.
Such a humiliation could have been easily overcome, but Khan also knew that continuing the tirade against a settled government may irk the army as well, and chances for recovery could then be slim.
He therefore opted to confine himself to KPK, putting off for the time being the demand for the removal of the Sharif administration, and fresh elections. He and his key supporters have kept harping on the tune that the demand for judicial probe into election rigging will not be withdrawn; analysts were quick to assess that Khan’s game, at least for the time being, was over.
However PTI chief also knows that he has a chance now to win 6 or 7 seats from KPK in the Parliament’s upper house of Senate, and may well get one or two seats from the Punjab. He will thus, for the first time, have representation in the true sense in the parliament. The Senate elections are due on March 3, and nominations are to be filed on February 11. He therefore hardly has time to waste .Obviously he would not be misguided by his party-men at this critical juncture to quit national assembly and KPK seats. By being in the Senate, he will have enormous leverage in national politics. How would he react in future to safeguard against being wiped off from the national scene is a vital question, which he and his party’s key functionaries will now need to answer.
But in conclusion general consensus prevails that Imran had awakened the people, injecting a new life in them to catch the rulers for follies or mis-governance. That in itself is Khan’s immense contribution. PML(N) had trained all its guns on the PTI chief, but that is all part of the game. It is the end result that counts.
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