The Choice of Imran Khan
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

Could there be any student of the history of Pakistan Movement who didn’t know about the immutable ‘Ali Brothers;’ more specifically, about the younger of the duo, Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar?

Maulana Jauhar wasn’t only a fiery speaker but was also gifted with a mighty pen, the flourish of which could send reverberations from Delhi right up to the Palace of Westminster in London. As an inhabitant of imperialist Britain’s greatest overseas possession, the Crown Jewel of India, he’d the unique distinction of being an op-ed columnist for ace English newspapers, The Times of London, Manchester Guardian, The Observer,et al.

But Mohammad Ali Jauhar is best remembered for his brilliantly articulated editorials in his own weekly newspaper, The Comrade. His writings stirred the imaginations of his people and knocked the fear of his pen in the hearts of British India’s snooty colonizers.

But the editorial—a 40-column long—he wrote on the plight of the Turks, under the caption The Choice of the Turks, at the beginning of World War I, wasn’t only the finest he ever wrote but had such a reverberation that the paper, The Comrade, was banned and sealed the same day, September 6, 1914.

In that masterpiece of editorial writing—that made the British scurrying for cover—Maulana Jauhar not only reminded the Turks of their past glory, under the Ottomans, but also cautioned them to not make the wrong choice of throwing their lot behind the Axis Power of Germany, then arrayed against Imperialist Britain.

But the Ottomans, still nominally ruling the roost over the Turks, made the wrong choice of siding with Germany against Britain and, as a consequence, paid a heavy price of their wrong choice. Once done with Germany, Imperialist Britain, and its European allies then turned their guns in the direction of Turkey. Their aim was to wipe off Turkey from the world map.

It was at that stage that the Turks made the right choice of resisting the imperialist onslaught against them by choosing an intrepid and inspiring leader like Kemal Ataturk to lead them to salvation. Which might prompt the question: was it that Turkey’s unique circumstances made Ataturk a great leader, accidentally, or was it the great leader in Ataturk that saved Turkey from oblivion?

Which brings us to the question, what does Turkey and Ataturk’s example have to do with Imran Khan and Pakistan?

Well, it seems that there’s a parallel of sorts between the crisis Turkey existentially faced at the end of World War I—which, in disguise, blessed it with a leader as great and astute as Ataturk—and what Pakistan’s wobbly and hobbled democratic polity hankered for after ten moribund years of kleptocracy under Zardari and Nawaz Sharif.

At the end of his nearly two years in power, there’s still a debate going on in Pakistan whether Imran is a genuinely elected leader—as his loyalist aficionados so whole-heartedly believe, despite their plummeting numbers—or an accidental leader chosen by powers-that-be and thrust over the Pakistanis as their leader!

Why this debate is being waged with such intensity and fervor is no big surprise or secret. There’s a segment of Pakistan’s libertine news media, funded by tycoons in hog, up to their eye-balls, to the likes of Zardari and Nawaz, which has taken up cudgels with IK from his day-one in the saddle of power. Theirs is a mission with no holds-barred. Anything or everything done by IK is, per se, anathema to him and must be opposed and decried as a matter of no choice by some hare-brained wielders of pen.

But the focus on the accidental nature of his choice as the leader of Pakistan in a moment of great anguish and anxiety is being narrowed and sharpened by IK himself, because of his erratic and tentative style of leadership.

The first obvious flaw in his leadership is an appalling lack of consistency and resilience. It may sound like a pun but one has to admit, with sorrow, that the only thing consistent and constant in IK’s two years in power is his inconsistency.

The first, ineluctable, requirement for a great leader is consistency of mission. Never mind great revolutionaries. They—20 th century’s greatest revolutionaries like Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro and Imam Khomeni, for example—didn’t waver in their mission to take their people where they wanted to. They were never wrong-footed, nor did they allow their adversaries a chance to second-guess them.

But more relevant in the case of IK would be great leaders like Ataturk and Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Ataturk, once he’d expelled the European predator powers from Turkey, knew exactly what he’d to do to make a ‘new’ Turkey out of the ruins of the Great but ultimately disgraced Ottoman Khilafat. He never looked back in his mission to hammer out a Turkey radically different from the old Ottoman Turkey. He faced resistance and opposition but neither flinched nor surrendered to his decriers.

Closer home to IK is the shining example of the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah faced legions of opponents—of all stripes and colors—to his sacred mission to carve out a homeland of their own for the Muslims of India. Once he’d his Pakistan—though he got only a truncated and rump version of his original idea—he set about, boldly, to define its contours. He hadn’t won Pakistan to turn it into a laboratory of Islam, he was forthright to declare. Instead, his dream Pakistan was going to be a secular state with room for all faiths and dispensations. It’s a different and tragic episode, albeit, that his successors didn’t live up to his vision and quickly botched his shining dream into a nightmare.

IK self-proclaimed himself as vowing to be the architect of a ‘New Pakistan.’ His political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was supposed to be an ideological party with a categorical mission, i.e. to rid Pakistan of its endemic culture of corruption. That being the party’s motto and mission it had to have, per se, a new set of political workers—young and dynamic—who hadn’t been under the shadows of kleptocrats, like Zardari and Nawaz, and were untainted.

But what did Imran do after his debacle in two successive elections, once under Bonaparte Musharraf and the other of 2008, which brought the master-mafioso Zardari and his gang of thieves to power? Imran opened the doors of his party to the so-called ‘electables.’ In doing so—biting the so-called silver bullet—IK seemed totally unconcerned with, and oblivious to, the track record of these ‘electables.’ These were, almost all of them, traditional politicians belonging to the feudal gentry of Punjab that makes up the so-called ruling elite of Pakistan.

But these electables were people without any moral grain. They were past-masters of a banal political ethics of revolving-door. They were accustomed to changing their political affiliation and party more frequently than they would change their shirt. IK’s much-ballyhooed ‘Naya Pakistan’ was a misnomer and a non-starter from the word go in the hands of such unprincipled practitioners of status quo eating at the entrails of Pakistan.

This tendency underlined IK’s ingrained incapacity to be a good judge of man. A true leader like the Quaid had the inner sense to evaluate those around him and sift the grain from the chaff. No wonder that Quaid’s lieutenants reflected his own personality of an honest, astute and straightforward man. He wouldn’t allow the riff-raff to be anywhere near him. All India Muslim League’s portals weren’t open for carpet-baggers or bounty-hunters. It was only after the League’s spectacular triumph in Punjab in the 1946 general elections that he reluctantly opened his doors to the feudals of Punjabi Muslims who abandoned the sinking ship of their erstwhile Unionist Party—of Hindu Banyas and Muslim landlords of Punjab.

However, the Quaid knew those turn-coats inside out. He knew that they were deserting a sinking ship and leaping into the League’s shore-bound boat because of sheer expediency. He described these bounty hunters as khotey sikkey (counterfeit currency) in the League’s pockets and judiciously kept them at arm’s length. It was only after his demise that these sharks got into their elements, conspired to have the Quaid’s chosen successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, killed and thereafter seize the political high ground of Pakistani politics. The Republican Party born in the shadow of West Pakistan’s nefarious ‘One-Unit’ was a reincarnation of the erstwhile Unionist Party, sans its Hindu- Banya component.

IK’s ideological party has long since been subsumed by these notorious ‘electables’ who have also, cleverly, subverted his slogan of Tabdili (Change) and steered the party’s agenda and thrust towards their own mantra. PTI is now, for all practical purposes, as much a party of hackneyed politicos and their self-serving politics as any other.

Not supported by people of belief in his proclaimed manifesto of radical change, IK’s government, in its nearly two years in power, is as much a prisoner of past practices and policies that brought Pakistan to a sad pass. There’s little by way of change or departure from the past that IK in power could boast of. The wielding of power by IK is as patchy and tentative as of the two corrupt-to-their-bone-marrow regimes of Nawaz and Zardari that preceded him.

The most appalling failure is in IK’s crusade against corruption. Of the two mega corrupt barons, Nawaz has conveniently dodged the elaborate charade of the drive to nab him for good and consign him to the dungeon of ignominy. For months he has been thumbing his nose at IK and all the so-called grand paraphernalia of accountability touted with such elan. Zardari, likewise, seems beyond the pale of any accountability. In fact, it’s hard to tell if he’s still in Pakistan. The rumor-mills churning incessantly in the Pakistani social media have it—if they were to be believed—that he has escaped to his sanctuary in Dubai with the connivance of powers-that-be.

These galling failures are already being cited as black marks on IK’s roster as a leader. It’s sad but has to be said, with remorse, that the immaculate reputation he had earned for himself as captain of Pakistan’s 1992 victorious cricket team—which paved his passage to political stardom—has been more conspicuous in failures than achievement in his new role of Pakistan’s political leader.

The resolute leader of the cricket field who stood his ground with firmness has been replaced by an irresolute and vacillating figure afflicted by a debilitating syndrome: one step forward but quickly followed by two-steps backward. That’s a prescription for disaster for any leader, anywhere in the world. Pakistan, with a plethora of problems, is not in safe hands. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)