Imran Khan’s Dinosaur Complex?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

Intriguing, testing, times for Imran Khan (IK) at this mid-term juncture in his stint in power. The test of his leadership mettle couldn’t be more daunting.

But, wait. There’s something from that immutable, 20 th century, genius, Albert Einstein, which so succinctly encapsulates the essence of IK’s problem, a self-inflicted wound, to be realistic. What the great scientist said, in brief, was that doing the same thing over and over again and hoping, every time, that the result would be a different is a sure sign of insanity!

Of course, IK is not insane. Not even the worst of his myriad nemeses in the ranks of Pakistan’s pathetically inane opposition has ever blamed him for insanity, although they may have called him names, every time they open their mouths to throw up their bile.

By the way, IK’s erratic enemy brigade is disintegrating and evaporating into thin air at a pace that must astound everyone, including some ‘jaded’ stalwarts larding the PDM’s ranks. IK was never in any danger of being ousted by this pack of corrupt robber-barons but they are, in their own twisted and warped ‘genius’ making it so much convenient for him to ignore them and brush them aside, with a contempt they so richly deserved. The so-called ‘combined opposition’ hectoring IK with a doomsday scenario, is falling by the wayside like nine pins, literally.

But then, IK is proving to be his own worst enemy and detractor, not because he’s unqualified to live up to the onerous task of leading a country as polarized and deeply-divided as Pakistan, but simply by his dubious and self-destructive tools of governance.

Pundits don’t have to scratch their heads to pinpoint the fault lines so jarringly running through his structure of ruling over Pakistan. He’s floundering in his self-assigned task of revamping a Pakistan brutally ravaged by corrupt ruling mafias over the past three decades. He ascended to power as a missionary determined to clear the decks of the country off all that debris of corruption and mismanagement left by robber-barons preceding him. He anointed his stint in power with a messianic balm, saying that he’d arrived to not only sweep away the garbage of corruption but also usher in a ‘new’ Pakistan that would refresh and revive the golden legacy of the ‘State of Medina.’

That was quite a stirring call that lit many a torch in the gloomy hearts of hundreds of millions of everyday Pakistanis. But, to the consternation of those who pinned their hopes for a better Pakistan in his clarion call, he has precious little to show by way of achievement, after having chalked up more than half the journey down the road of his rule. The going is becoming increasingly tough for him, and the proverbial stance of ‘the tough’ getting ready to go when the chips are down is nowhere in sight.

IK’s Achilles’ heel is the burgeoning brigade of ministers, advisers and special assistants he has assembled with so much elan around him. He should have known that what matters as the key to good performance is not quantity but quality—which is so conspicuous by its absence in the team supposedly tasked with the challenge to flesh out his vision of a ‘new’ Pakistan. Therein, too, what hurts every observer of the scene is IK’s terrible weakness of banking on spent bullets and dinosaurs to turn his dream into reality.

What even a layman can easily point out is the utter failure of his economic policies, driving down the economy into the pits and making it a horrendous burden for the common man to put food on the table for his family.

In two and half years, IK has changed his Finance Minister three times. What hurts most is his reliance on those dinosaurs who have studded every ruling mafia of Pakistan and spectacularly failed in the past, before him, are still good horses for him to put his money on. One shouldn’t fault a pundit for pulling his own hairs out wondering what magic is there that these dinosaurs and spent-bullets still found traction with IK?

Hafeez Sheikh, a World Bank and IMF-nurtured Western mole, who made a hash of the economy under Zardari, was picked up by IK to transform an economy mired into a bog of his and his ilk’s making. No surprise that Sheikh failed, once again, leaving the economy deeper into a hole and making the common man’s life a living hell.

But IK doesn’t seem to have had his fill of these dead-horses. He’s now ready to experiment with another Western economic-hitman. He may have an equation going back decades with Shaukat Tareen who, like Shaukat Aziz (‘Short-cut Aziz, to most Pakistanis) cut his teeth at the City Bank. But Tareen’s performance as Musharraf’s economic Tsar was, at best, patchy. Besides, he has at least half a dozen cases against him, still on NAB’s active files, for corruption. He seems ready to practice his anti-Midas touch with Pakistan’s moribund economy—and ruin it with impunity—if only IK would lean on NAB to wipe the slate clean for him and absolve him of all corruption charges against him. It may not be long before the country knows which way IK leans: on Tareen’s side or in favour of a tortured and deeply-wounded lot of Pakistanis.

There are other dinosaurs, too, gracing IK’s inner circle of ‘experts’ and ‘advisers.’

Razzak Daoud is one. A scion of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families, he has been a permanent feature of almost every ruling clique, since Musharraf’s notorious era. Even now, on IK’s watch and sheltering under his benign umbrella, Daoud has garnered tens of billions of Rupees for his clutch of ‘Independent Power Producers’(IPPs) from a nearly-bankrupt GOP. He’s pressing for still more money for his concerns, which have skimmed off the harassed Pakistani economy off billions without producing one kilowatt of electricity.

There’s Dr Ishrat Hussain, who deserves the title of ‘doyen’ of Pakistani dinosaurs. Like Hafeez Sheikh, he too is a product of Washington-based WB and IMF. Now into his 80s, he’s still going as strong under IK as under every regime before him. Tasked by IK with the impressive title of Chairman of ‘Institutional Reforms’ in Pakistan, he has precious little to show for a track record. But IK hasn’t lost faith in this dinosaur who has mastered the art of survival like none other in the constellation of power in Pakistan.

One has no choice but agree that of all those ‘characters’ flaunting their credentials as guardians of democracy in Pakistan, IK is, for want of a better expression, least bad and controversial. He’s not corrupt and his commitment to Pakistan remains undisputed and above-board. However, he’s in imminent danger of losing his marbles and getting completely off the track in his avowed mission to lead the nation to its salvation by hammering out a new Pakistan.

A leader without a vision is no leader. A leader without a blue-print of where he would want to lead his people is as good as a non-entity. The remarks he made during a recent Telethon on the rights of women in Pakistan have raised hackles, as they betrayed a regrettable lack of empathy and understanding of the core issue of how to give the Pakistani women their rightful place in a society still haunted by an archaic feudal culture.

IK’s off-the-cuff comments on the sensitive subject of a rampant culture of rape smacked of misogyny to many. How could he be so insensitive as to blame ‘indecency’ of a woman’s attire and alleged ‘obscenity’ as factors prompting rape? A man with such archaic sense of a woman’s place in the Pakistani culture has no right to lead. And for such a man to claim that he’s the self-anointed architect of a ‘New Pakistan’ is an outright insult to the dignity of womenfolk and to the great legacy of the Founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

The challenge for the Pakistanis is, now, to protect the glorious heritage of their ‘one-and-only- Quaid’ against marauding from those whose sense of gender-equality is marooned in the Middle Ages, if not the Stone Age. IK is in peril and Pakistan in dire straits. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)