Whose Naya Pakistan Will it be?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
As these lines are being written, the electoral process for Imran Khan’s proclaimed ‘Naya Pakistan’ has been completed.
The election of PTI’s Dr Arif Alvi as Pakistan’s 13th President not only puts the bottom line to Election 2018 but also puts the seal of authority on Imran Khan’s rise to the pinnacle of power in Pakistan. Except for the Zardari-besieged province of Sindh, where the ancient regime still hogs the political scene, Imran’s remit over the rest of Pakistan reigns supreme. The trophy is his. All that he has to prove to the nation and the world is that he’s fully deserving of it.
Imran’s problems and challenges are plenty. These include both the home front and the world outside Pakistan.
In external relations the most immediate challenge is posed by the tangled relationship with the US, supposedly Pakistan’s oldest ‘ally.’ As these lines are being penned, Trump’s high profile emissary, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on his way to Islamabad for his maiden encounter with Pakistan’s new leadership.
Imran’s new Pakistan wouldn’t be averse to helping Washington to a face-saving exit from an Afghanistan where it finds itself stranded without an exit strategy. But the relationship, as Imran and FM Shah Mehmood Qureshi have so unequivocally articulated, will have to be based on mutual trust and respect. Being bullied isn’t on Imran’s checklist of foreign policy.
US alone will not be testing Imran’s mettle in a field, foreign affairs, where he’s a virtual novice. Next door India, in thrall to an increasingly chauvinistic and belligerent Modi swayed by the nihilistic philosophy of Hindutva, will also throw up challenges and road blocks of myriad variety. Imran has shown all the goodwill expected of him at the threshold of power to India. But response from Delhi has been tardy. The ruckus kicked up by the Indian news media and Hindutva proponents on Navjot Siddhu’s presence at Imran’s inauguration in Islamabad should dash all expectations of the logjam in bilateral relations with India giving way any time soon. A thaw in nowhere in sight.
However, the challenges in foreign relations of Pakistan pale into insignificance compared to how the home front may test Imran. It will be harsh, it will be sever, and it will be bitter, to say the least.
The portents of what is to come are already visible in the Pakistani news media’s cavalier and cussed ‘welcome’ of Imran and his government.
Over the years since Musharraf loosened the official grip over the media, especially its electronic component, it has mutated into a hydra-headed monster that believes in fire-belching as its finest mode. Media anchors, a majority of them if not all of them, have arrogated to themselves the privileges of a prosecutor, judge and hangman, all rolled into one. They seem to think of themselves as Pakistan’s new kingmakers endowed with authority to make or break a politician of any stripes.
How uncivilized and arrogant of these self-styled ‘kingmakers’ to have kicked off a concerted campaign to malign and defame Imran and his team, both at the federal and provincial levels, with abandon and with little regard for journalistic integrity, within three days of induction in office. They arrogantly refuse to cut any slack to the fresh inductees in the corridors of power. Disingenuous of such pen-pushers, no doubt.
Imran isn’t the type to be intimidated, though he has, to his credit, initially sued for peace with an unbridled and irresponsible media by pleading with television anchors to give him a breathing space of at least 100 days before sitting in judgment over his performance.
It’s a very reasonable demand which ought to be honored. But it remains to be seen what the media response is. Those with an insight into how media outlets have been made hostage to the whims and commercial interests of tycoons like Malik Riaz, one can’t be too sanguine of the media behaving honorably with Imran.
But a much more sinister challenge to Imran’s vision of a new Pakistan is poised to be mounted from religious extremism of the most obscurantist mold typified by the recently-born, but mushrooming, Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan ( TLP) which gained international notoriety with its dharna in the twilight days of N-League rule last year.
Imran’s political opponents have been put on the back-foot and made to lick the dust of ignominy in the recent elections. The last rites in their humiliation were administered at the presidential election where the candidates of N-League and PPP were soundly trounced by PTI’s Arif Alvi.
But Pakistani politicians of the vintage that predominates the ranks of both N-League and PPP have no shame and they have no fame for taking defeat with dignity or aplomb. Using proxies to pull their chestnuts out of the fire is an old tactic of these defeatist parties and jaded politicians.
Maulana Fazalur Rehman’s nomination as its candidate for presidential contest by N-League was a clear signal that the hackneyed practice of deploying proxies to make their point is still very much in vogue with Nawaz and his cohorts.
Of course, the N-League cleverly exploited the Maulana’s addiction to power, in any guise. The Maulana himself is totally shameless and his hypocrisy has a history of its own. But Imran should be alive to the challenge posed to his new Pakistan by this unholy alliance between religious obscurantism and vindictive and myopic feudals unprepared to accept that their era of wholesale plunder of Pakistan is over and Pakistanis are done with them.
The backlash from obscurantist mullahs and defeated political opponents of Imran to the inclusion of a renowned US-based Pakistani economist, Dr Atif Mian from the world-renowned Princeton University, in his Economic Advisory Council is a case in point.
The combined Mullah-N-League brigade is howling in protest over Dr Mian’s nomination because he happens to be an Ahmadi, or Qadiyani, belonging to a minority sect. Imran’s spokesman, Fawad Chaudhry, has done well by instantly rebutting the ludicrous charge against the nominee by reminding the stone-age-mentality brigade that Pakistan belongs as much to the minorities as to its majority. The law of the land in Pakistan and its constitution guarantees equal rights to the minorities inhabiting the land.
This debate is going to be of focal interest and importance in Imran’s avowed ‘New Pakistan’ which is, in reality, a hark back to Jinnah’s Pakistan whose contours were copiously articulated by the Father of the Nation in his address of August 11, 1947.
The Quaid had clearly and categorically delineated the course for his new-born nation to traverse in his brilliantly articulated address, three days before the formal birth of Pakistan. Imran has never shied away from proclaiming the Quaid as his role-model. In his own maiden address to the nation, on August 19, a day after his induction into office, Imran didn’t mince his words in reminding his people that his mission will be to restore Jinnah’s vision of an inclusive and progressive Pakistan.
Contrary to what Jinnah stood for, and Imran stands for, the obscurantist brigade led by the likes of Fazalur Rehman, or that foul-mouthed Khadim Hussain Rizvi of TLP, have their tunnel vision of a Pakistan consigned to their archaic thinking.
What the Pakistanis, now blessed with a visionary and progressive leader like Imran Khan, need to understand—and be constantly reminded of—is that Imran’s New Pakistan is not going to turn its back on that humane and humanitarian Islam, a mission of peace, propagated by our Holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in his uniquely successful Madani State, which was a model to the world 14 centuries ago and still remains an unparalleled model of peace- within and peace – without for a strife-torn and problems-plagued 21st century. That model state had respect for rights of all men as its center-piece. Minorities were as much part of it as Muslims.
Imran’s new Pakistan is inspired by the model of Medina. It has Jinnah’s unblinkered vision as its GPS to guide and propel it to the destiny that the founding father had in his sights but couldn’t realize it because his time ran out. Imran has time and his people behind him, and he isn’t going to be distracted by the likes of Fazalur Rehman and Khadim Hussain Rizvi. These obscurantists had no role in the making of Jinnah’s Pakistan, and have no place in Imran’s New Pakistan.
The sooner their bluff is called and their mischief nipped in the bud the better for all those who wouldn’t love anything more than Imran’s New Pakistan taking roots.
- K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
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