His New Pakistan Will Test Imran to the Hilt
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

Dreams rarely come true. Dreams of politicians are even harder to come true. They, at best, remain pipe dreams and die there, in a dark dungeon or a blind alley.
With his impressive triumph at the July 25 polls in Pakistan, Imran has, however, carved up another significant milestone in his arduous journey of proving his credentials of Pakistan’s most charismatic politician.
PTI’s remarkable gains at the national polls proved those pundits wrong who pontificated that Imran’s dream of becoming Pakistan’s PM would remain a pipe dream.
Imran proved the Cassandras wrong and landed right there where he’d wanted to all these past 22 years as leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI in popular parlance. By bagging at least 115 of the 270 National Assembly seats contested last July 25, Imran emerged as the leader of the largest party in the Assembly. In simple language familiar to all, he earned the right to become the next PM of Pakistan—the most coveted elected office in the ‘Land of the Pure.’
None except the purblind would disagree that Imran has reached the pinnacle of power in a highly polarized Pakistan with grit and perseverance. It was his charisma, his matinee-idol looks that endeared him to the younger generations of Pakistanis in particular, that had launched him, no doubt, and made him an instant celebrity in the hall of politics. But without his nerves of steel and granite perseverance charisma would’ve wilted under pressure.
As he so rightly said in his victory address to the nation, no other politician had so much been reviled as he from his opponents who sniped at him and his character with vengeance that was too toxic even for Pakistan’s feudal culture. But he refused to relent or surrender. In the end it paid him the dividends he was after for so long.
But Imran is no spring chicken in politics to lose his poise and bearings in the euphoria of his party’s astounding success. He’s too astute to not know that what is to follow his gains at the polls will test his mettle much more than the election campaign did or, for that matter, his entire struggle of 22 years to reach this threshold of power.
Pakistan is not an easy country to govern; never was. But what Imran is going to inherit by way of governance is a country that has been disparaged, not by an outside enemy but by the enemy within: those who never stopped shouting from their roof tops that they had the people’s ‘mandate’ to rule over them.
It’s no exaggeration to liken what’s being passed on to Imran to the Augean Stables, festering and putrid with years of accumulated mounds of corruption, mismanagement and sheer bad governance. The economy is in the pits, corruption rampant and out of control and the people of Pakistan bewildered and askance and, in sheer desperation, praying for a messiah to turn up and put paid to their monumental suffering.
So, despite some of his fawning fans and adoring acolytes portraying him as a messiah to cure them of all ills inflicted by the likes of Zardari and Nawaz, Imran should know better that he isn’t even a Hercules to have the muscles to bring in a river into the stables and wash away all their filth and miasma in a flush.
Faced with a mountain of problems and challenges, Imran’s first priority should be to get a checklist of priorities handy and go about his monumental task by ticking off the items on it, one by one.
Everyone agrees that the economy of Pakistan is in a mess—and that’s just an under-statement. So, revamping a moribund economy has to be the foremost priority of those setting about building a ‘New Pakistan.’ This new Pakistan will have to be built, per se, on the ruins of a monumentally-mismanaged economy that was the hallmark of the endemically corrupt Nawaz regime and, earlier, that of Zardari.
To his credit, Imran has assembled a team of some very capable, intelligent and astute men around him. They are professionals, technocrats and men having served in multinational corporations. They know their onions and know how to infuse life back into a sick outfit like Pakistan’s hobbled economy.
There’s, for example, a wizard of global corporate culture like Asad Omar, already tipped to don the mantle of Imran’s Finance Minister. He has experience and caliber to take on this heavy responsibility. Unlike most two-bit traditional politicians who routinely boast of making sacrifices for Pakistan he did, actually, forsake a very lucrative corporate career to join hands with Imran. He sets a shining example for all youths of Pakistan aspiring to join Imran’s crusade to hammer out a new Pakistan from the ashes of the old.
But the economy wouldn’t recover in a vacuum. The outgoing regime, and the one before it, intentionally botched the country’s financial institutions and revenue-producing institutions to serve their agenda of loot. These institutions will have to be resuscitated and virtually rebuilt from scratch to become the tools of reviving and bolstering the economy.
Financial institutions—The State Bank of Pakistan, FBR et al.—will have to be recalibrated and retuned to serve as the motors of a healthy and delivering economy.
The task of reviving the economy, however, must go hand-in-hand with the ineluctable need to hold the architects of Pakistan’s doom accountable to the last iota of culpability. Imran not only owes it to himself—he entered politics primarily to combat the monster of corruption—but to the people of Pakistan who have responded, vociferously, to his crusade to rid the country of its robber barons.
Accountability, down to the last penny of the loot, of the likes of Nawaz and Zardari, the twin doyen of corruption in Pakistan, must have the singular goal of setting an example in order to pre-empt the pestilence from reinventing itself in another garb. Imran may have marked his magnanimity by telling the nation that he will not be practicing the politics of vengeance.
That may well be so and should be a welcome gesture; the right move for a fresh entrant into national power. But rogues like Zardari and Nawaz are enemies of the people and the nation they feigned to serve. Instead, they cheated and robbed it clean. Letting them off in the garb of ‘not-pursuing-the-politics-of-vengeance’ will be tantamount to turning a blind eye to their crimes. They must be punished so that others are forewarned.
Imran and his team’s gaze should also, urgently, be focused on deciding what to do with white elephants like PIA and the Steel Mills. These once healthy public corporations have been brutally pulverized by Zardari and Nawaz. They and their cronies feasted on these public utility motors of economy like vultures. Over-staffed and under-producing, these corporations have drained limited resources of state for years, if not decades. Imran should decide how to revive them: by injecting them with more resources or by putting them up on the auction bloc for privatization.
Now that he’s about to get into the saddle of what’s without doubt a haggard and moth-infested Pakistan, Imran will need little time, if any, to know what a colossal responsibility he has taken upon his shoulders. But he has the will to deliver on all that he must have been mulling over in his mind all these past 22 years to turn a sick and ailing Pakistan into a healthy, vibrant and dynamic country. Now is his moment to build according to his blueprint for a changed and reformed Pakistan.
Imran needn’t be reminded that notwithstanding his indomitable will, his New Pakistan will only be built through team work. He has a commendable, competent team of dedicated professionals around him. He should soldier on with them in lock-step with him. He has often been accused of being a solo flyer though his record as Pakistan’s most successful and brilliant cricket captain belies that charge. He couldn’t have succeeded without team work in cricket which is entirely a team game.
However, if there’s any iota of truth in his harboring autocratic instincts, he must curb them in the interest of Pakistan and for the sake of his own career as the putative architect of a new Pakistan.
Fate, and the people of Pakistan voting in his favor, have landed Imran on a spot where he can prove all his detractors wrong. Here’s his chance to prove that the qualities of leadership that brought him glory on the cricket field have the magic effect to make him a deserving architect of his ‘New Pakistan’ too. Even those not necessarily in awe of him but with the love of Pakistan ensconced in their heart ought to wish him bon voyage.
The journey ahead of him, and Pakistan, is destined to be long and hard. It’s going to test every speck of grit and resilience in him. Good luck, Imran. Good fortune, Pakistan. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and a career diplomat)