Stirrings of a Revolution?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
According to statistics released by Twitter, formally, on April 25, for general information, the raging Hashtag # Account, from Pakistan, “Imported Government ‘Na Manzoor’ (Unacceptable) has had more than 106 million hits and Tweets all over the world. This makes this popular Tweet site the most liked sites in Twitter’s history.
This Twitter trend was launched in Pakistan, under the aegis of Imran Khan’s (IK) Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party, or PTI, following its leader’s ouster as the 22 nd Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the consequent induction into the vacated office of PM of Pakistan of Shahbaz Sharif, leader of the erstwhile opposition party in Pakistan’s parliament, PML-N.
The massive following that PTI’s social media campaign against IK’s orchestrated ouster from power—and the rise of a shaded and hugely corrupt Shabaz Sharif—has generated, so quickly speaks volumes for the popular validity of IK and his colleagues that his government’s collapse was due to political engineering.
IK’s nemeses, in both the ‘establishment’ and his political foes, are still, desperately, trying to obfuscate the issue of his forced ouster by playing upon words. While they concede that there was ‘intervention’ in Pakistan’s domestic affairs and internal politics, their wizardry isn’t ready to concede that there was a conspiracy, as such.
The word-game was initiated by DG, ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) when he tried to finesse the controversy by getting on the podium at a summoned press conference and saying with a straight face that there was never the word ‘conspiracy’ in the minutes of the meeting of the country’s highest-level National Security Committee when it had met under IK in the chair.
Three massive public rallies, in a span of ten days at the largest cities of Pakistan—Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar—is proof of the pudding, i.e., the people put their faith where the mouth of their leader is. The people are at one, behind IK, their leader, that his government’s fall was engineered.
PTI’s catch-slogan of an ‘imported government’ of thieves and traitors has spread across the Pakistani political landscape like a jungle fire. The incredible success of the social media Hashtag Twitter campaign, within such a short span of time, is proof of it.
What’s clearly a first in Pakistan’s political almanac is that IK has energized the educated, middle-class, intelligentsia of the country. Political pundits—including this one—had long lamented that Pakistan’s silent majority’s reign of unabated silence was a bane of democratic lack of growth. Because the educated middle class—universally regarded as the backbone of a democratic polity—had kept itself aloof from the mainstream of politics, their apathy had given a free run of the field to the followers of dynastic politics.
Demagogues, plutocrats and others of their ilk in Pakistan had taken it for granted that they would hog the political space, left vacant for them by the silent majority’s proven disinterest in politics, on the strength of their wealth—ill-begotten, in most cases—or their clannish connections. Pakistan’s silent majority was like the proverbial jinn, all bottled up and left to rest at the bottom of an ocean of ignorance.
What IK has done is that he has released that bottled-up jinn, and the miracle in its wake has catapulted him to the pinnacle of popularity not seen in Pakistan since the halcyon days of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in the early days of his political movement against the hobbled regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan.
IK has pulled huge ranks of young men and women, enlightened and educated, to his public rallies in key urban centers of Pakistan. The roaring success of his social media campaign should hobble those whose sole interest is in prolonging their orchestrated rise to power.
As every student of politics in Pakistan knows, this gang of political knaves and poltroons, headed by a man who has dozens of cases of corruption pending against him, has no following. It’s there thanks to the courtesy of its local handlers—in the establishment and an ignoble judiciary—and its mentors. It will fall like a sandcastle the moment its patronage is withdrawn.
So, one should focus on what the minders and mentors might be thinking. It’s a fair guess that the puppeteers have no clear plan as to how they would ensure longevity of life for the puppets at the end of their string. But the more they dither, the more there will be chaos and uncertainty hovering over Pakistan.
The only way out of the morass is general elections at the earliest. But that’s a Catch-22 for the puppet masters. They know as well as any unbiased and independent pundit of the Pakistani scene that an early election would translate the ongoing groundswell of popular approbation and approval of IK into a massive majority in the parliament of Pakistan. The puppeteers know not how to square this circle. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
