The Downhill Road for Imran?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
It was that American sage, George Santayana, who uttered these prophetic words: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Pakistanis are a prime example of such a people for whom past has no lessons to teach. Because of this terrible habit of theirs, they go on repeating, over and over again, the folly of electing carpet-baggers and time-servers as their leaders and, then, endlessly cavil their blunder.
But their leaders aren’t any different either. They don’t learn from those mistakes that may have brought down their precursors, or those preceding them in power at various phases of Pakistan’s history.
It goes without saying that the eleven-year-rule of Field Marshal Ayub Khan has, to date, been the most successful and productive in the annals of Pakistan. The country had progressed, in true material sense, by leaps and bounds under him. And yet Ayub’s rule was brought down, curiously, by a strange combination of a demagogic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s incendiary rhetoric and the shortage of sugar in the country. While ZAB’s aficionados give him the prime credit for ending the long night of Ayub’s autocratic and authoritarian rule, an impartial historian, not influenced by Bhutto’s charm offensive, would say it was, at the heart of it, the sugar shortage crisis that unhinged the Ayubian era and triggered its demise.
Imran Khan, the self-proclaimed prophet of ‘Naya Pakistan’ has been in power for just about 18 months—a paltry amount of time compared to Ayub’s 11 years in power. However, in this brief span of time, IK has allowed a stirring crisis of mass discontent with his democratic rule.
Apart from the cracks becoming increasingly visible in the coalition of the willing parties that underpin his perilously thin majority in the Parliament, it’s the gathering mass of the ‘Ata’ crisis that seems to be seriously rattling his wobbly rule.
More, later, on the falling apart of his coalition of the willing. Let’s first focus on the ‘Ata’ or flour crisis which has Pakistan in its throes, from Karachi up to the Khyber Pass.
IK and his government have brought this seismic crisis upon themselves through sheer incompetence and tentative management of national resources.
Pakistan had burgeoning stocks of wheat in its silos and warehouses. IK’s govt. in a horrible example of indifference and incompetence, allowed 700, 000 tons of home-grown wheat to be exported, much against the advice of the Commerce Ministry. Now with the country aflame with flour shortages, it’s rushing to import wheat from abroad at a premium, compared to the dirt-low prices Pakistani wheat was allowed to be shipped out.
This gross incompetence and insouciance on the watch of a man whose reputation as skipper of the national cricket team was that of a strict disciplinarian and a hard-task master. He’d brook no nonsense from any quarters when it came to enforcing discipline in the ranks of his ‘boys.’ Why such appalling absence of discipline in the ranks of his government?
It’s not only a case of incompetent managers larding his team of governance. He seems to have nestled under his wings an array of clowns, jokers, knaves and poltroons. Remember the risible episode, of this past week, when his Minister, Faisal Vawda, produced from his bag of tricks a shining military boot, right there in the midst of a live television talk-show and proudly displayed it as the symbol of power in his boss’ ‘Naya Pakistan.’
That boorish behavior and outrageous conduct of that clown, Vawda, deserved immediate and exemplary disciplining from the skipper. But ‘Kaptan’ has maintained a mysterious silence over the episode and the rogue Vawda is still part of his cabinet. Is this how IK intends to run Pakistan? Is it a paragon of his much-touted ‘State of Medina’? What kind of examples does he intend to set in the country: that it’s all fair and kosher, on his watch, for his cabinet colleagues to make utter fools of themselves but yet survive and thrive?
Sensing his weakness and his increasingly manifest failure to come to grips with the reins of power in his hands, his coalition partners are raising the price of their loyalty to his rule.
MQM, true to its tradition of notoriety, was the first to break ranks with him. Its leaders are past masters of milking an ‘ally’ when the bull may be down or close to being gored.
Maqbool Siddiqi, the MQM maestro, said with a straight face that they weren’t deserting IK’s ship; at least not yet. But he wouldn’t like to remain in the cabinet as leader of MQM. He has no answer, of course, why the Law Minister, Faroogh Nasim, of MQM, robustly insists to carry on with Imran. It’s typical mafioso tactic of raising the ante to exact maximum benefit when the going gets onerous for their partner or partners.
The Chaudhris of Gujrat—notoriously self-serving as ever—are up in arms, too. Sensing blood, they suddenly came to their senses that IK hasn’t given them their due. So, Like Shylock of the “Merchant of Venice” they insist they must have their pound of flesh, too.
So, IK’s ‘Allies,’ a motley crowd of jackals and wolves, are tightening the screws on him. They want recompense, in full, for keeping his ship afloat. Or else, they would go to whoever offers them a better price. It’s as simple as that. They have a commodity to sell—their support to keep the alliance intact—and like any shrewd businessman have jacked up its price because it’s hot in demand. The knaves and poltroons of Pakistani politics may be thin on morality but drive a hard bargain when the chips are down.
IK has brought this blast of hot wind upon himself through an amalgam of incompetence, hubris and a hard-to-explain belief in his being the man of the moment and man of destiny of Pakistan.
Critics, whose ranks have started bulging, quite understandably, argue that IK has fallen under the pall of occultism. He’s being made to believe that forces beyond layman’s, or even intellectual, comprehension are charting his course and determining his destiny in Pakistan’s history. He doesn’t have to worry about this or that ally deserting him. He’d go on as long as he keeps his ‘Wasim Akram-plus’ ‘chosen’ sage, Usman Buzdar, the knave going around by the title of CM of Punjab, in the saddle in Lahore. The divine hand of justice for the deserving will be there to write every script in his favor. Bingo.
And then, on top of this pyramid sits the looming shadow of the ‘Deep State’ which, like the fickle finger of fate, has habitually and periodically written the main script of Pakistan’s stage-managed governance. The traditional king-makers have carefully and neatly laid out their deck of cards. Like ace chess-players, they have thought out the next few moves for their pawns on the chess-board. If need be, they wouldn’t be averse to sacrifice the king as long as they can preserve their privilege to call the shots.
So, the latest, unconfirmed news out of Lahore may have a ring of truth that the shrewd Chaudhris of Gujrat—who’d outsmarted the Commando Pervez Musharraf—have cornered the ‘Kaptan’ too and exacted a deal to their liking out of him. The grapevine says the main power-broker from the second-generation of the Gujrat Chaudhris, Moonis Elahi, will share power in Punjab with the shadowy Buzdar as a co-equal. A deal has already been cut and sealed with Jehangir Tareen, IK’s alter-ego, for this condominium of power in Punjab. Buzdar will, though, remain the figure-head CM, because that’s what the occult power ordains.
Let’s also add this as a footnote: there’s going to be a new Chief Election Commissioner, on which the ruling PTI and opposition parties have agreed. It’s a little-known civil servant, who retired from service recently. The name is Raja Sikandar Sultan. But wait. Hear this to get a complete picture of this new kid on the block. He’s a son-in-law of Saeed Mehdi. Remember him? He was, in his hey-day, notoriously known as Nawaz Sharif’s Principal Secretary. Some said he was the shadow-PM.
Now, after this, you shouldn’t raise any eye-brows when the next video of Nawaz partying in London with his cronies hits your television screen.
The story doesn’t end there. Raja Sikandar’s father is a retired military officer. You should be able to sense his importance with the help of these inputs. Kosher to the army, kosher to bureaucracy and, indeed, quite acceptable as a friendly man to the PML-N and PPP. If IK may be uncomfortable with this new whiz-kid, so be it. He has little choice but to gulp it down his throat. Pakistan’s king-makers are happy with the new CEC, as is the traditional ‘ruling elite.’ They can’t allow anyone but one of them to run the cloistered election regime and manipulate its strings.
Don’t be surprised folks if there are early general elections. Be also prepared for the tables turning on you-know-who! After all, the combined opposition, which meekly and dutifully allowed the legislation on Service tenures and other perks of Defense Services Chiefs to run the gauntlet in the National Assembly without any hurdles or hiccups, would like some early ‘reward’ for their ‘co-operation.’
Santayana wasn’t wrong, after all, in the Pakistani context. Let the people cry for flour to make their bread; they had cried earlier for sugar, which had brought down the ancient regime of a Field Marshal. ‘Kaptan’ is nowhere as seasoned as the Field Marshal. Tell him to roll out his prayer mat, and also the frequency of his worry-beads. He may need them, more than ever before. The bell has started tolling, hasn’t it?
(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
