Pakistanis woke up, the morning after February 8’s mid-night robbery, to learn, to their shock and utter revulsion that their unequivocal and categorical mandate in favor of IK and PTI had been brazenly robbed - Photo Notify Pakistan

 

Robbery at Midnight: Stealing Pakistanis’ Mandate
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

Dilating on how Pakistan’s pervasive and omniscient ‘Establishment’ blatantly rigged and doctored the outcome of the February 8 general elections in Pakistan, Imran Khan (IK), incarcerated leader of his Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), likened it to daylight robbery.

IK was talking only metaphorically about what was in actual fact a brazen act of robbery at midnight, carried out, shamelessly—and so far, remorselessly—by the people who claim they are guardians of Pakistan.

In their bloated perception of their own importance, at the kernel of power in Pakistan, they’d fine-tuned, to the last dot, all that they considered necessary to keep IK and his party out in the cold.

IK has been behind bars since early August, last year. The ‘establishment’ saw to it that he was not only disqualified—for at least 5 years—from active participation in politics but, days before the D-Day of elections, he was sentenced in three major scandals spuriously spun against him. In a matter of five days, he was handed out henpecked, kangaroo, court sentences ranging from 7 to 14 years.

PTI had been robbed—with a generous dollop of help from a supine apex court, presided over by a like-minded foe of IK—of its popular and people’s –friendly electoral symbol of IK’s Cricket bat. Earlier, a bamboozled Election Commission—headed by another IK-hater—had been prevailed upon to disband, on a technical loophole, PTI as a political party.

Forced to take part in the elections as ‘independent’ candidates, PTI members were hounded in myriad ways. They weren’t allowed to organize any public rallies; not even ‘corner meetings’ so staple to electioneering in Pakistan. They were treated as potential criminals by the puppet caretaker government which, in sharp contrast, obsequiously extended all such favors to PML-N—the party of re-habilitated Nawaz Sharif—and PPP and motley others. Many of the PTI independent candidates were thrown in jail on flimsy grounds; a good number of them were already behind bars and were contesting from there.

So, in their fertile imagination, the Bonapartes of Pakistan had done all that they thought necessary to treat IK and his followers as pariahs.

They were smug that they were in a position to eat their cake and have it, too. They’d condescendingly allowed PTI to field its candidates as ‘independents’ only after meticulously making sure that they would be entering the ring as boxers with one hand tied behind their backs.

But where the Machiavellian, and diabolical, spadework of the Bonapartes erred was in their estimation of the people of Pakistan.

The Bonapartes may be well and truly frozen in time. But the people of Pakistan aren’t. IK’s singular achievement as a politician and leader is that he has infused an awakening in what used to be dismissed, off-hand, as the ‘disinterested-in-politics silent majority.’

That decried silent majority has been awakened by IK’s inspiring leadership to the point where the Bonapartes and their minions of traditional politics have discovered, to their utter horror, that they can’t put this genie back into the bottle.

Yet another achievement of IK is his standing with the generation of young Pakistanis, who account for nearly 65 percent of Pakistan’s population. A greater number of these youngsters is not only educated but also highly articulated. IK’s following amongst them is impregnable.

So, undaunted by the spanners thrown in the works of IK and PTI—by the partisans of the status quo—this young brigade soldiered on to overcome the myriad impediments. Their major concern was how to parry the impact of PTI’s supporters not being enabled by its electoral symbol of ‘bat.’ There, their facility with, and access to, digital technology and the internet came in handy and won the day for them, for PTI followers, and, above all, for IK.

Mastering modern technology, the youngsters’ brigade familiarized PTI followers with the myriad electoral symbols of their independent candidates. Their masterstroke worked to perfection, removing any cobwebs of doubt in the minds of PTI supporters about their favorite candidates.

The groundwork by IK’s young and inspired soldiers blended perfectly with his own charismatic appeal to PTI voters. On Election Day, they came out in droves to vote for their independent PTI candidates.

It was the people’s fervor and enthusiasm that stunned the pompous generals. They couldn’t believe that their fine-tuned pre-poll rigging had fallen flat, throwing a lot of muck at their faces. They were plainly flabbergasted and left clueless.

Early results of the polls reflected the overwhelming popular verdict of the people in favor of PTI independents. They were sweeping the board. Titans of PML-N and motley other parties baptized by the Bonapartes were trailing behind and losing badly.

Jehangir Tareen, an early defector from IK’s close circle—who'd been pampered to use his billions to float a puppet party—was an early casualty.

Another deserter, Pervez Khattak from KPK—who had boasted of outwitting IK—also ended up with a lot of egg on his face.

But the most embarrassing case was that of Nawaz Sharif, who had been dressed up as the generals’ blue-eyed boy and a potential PM to hog that office for a fourth time. Nawaz had lost badly in Mansehra, KPK, to a PTI independent. But most humiliating for him—and his masters—was that he was trailing behind PTI’s Dr Yasmeen Rashid in what had been billed as his impregnable fort in Lahore.

Yasmeen Rashid has been incarcerated since May, last year. Yet, she was ahead of Nawaz by as much as twenty thousand votes, with 90 percent of the votes counted.

It was then that the generals donned the robes of plumbers to fix the disaster happening to their chosen ones. But in doing so, they sank to the depths of ignominy never before plumbed by other Bonapartes preceding them in the checkered history of them lording over the Pakistani landscape.

Pakistanis woke up, the morning after February 8’s mid-night robbery, to learn, to their shock and utter revulsion that their unequivocal and categorical mandate in favor of IK and PTI had been brazenly robbed by those self-appointed guardians of Pakistan who think they know better than ‘bloody civilians’ what’s in the interest of the country.

Nawaz was declared the winner in place of Yasmeen Rashid. So were scores of minions of Nawaz and lapdogs of the generals.

The brazen assault on the mandate of the people proved an old dictum of Stalin. The iron man of Russia, Joseph Stalin, had famously said: “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

But where the generals went wrong was in their sense of the times. This isn’t the era of darkness but the age of mass communication where no news stays local but becomes, instantly, global.

So, it took no time for the global media to call the establishment’s brazen theft of the people of Pakistan’s mandate in favor of IK.

Be that The New York Times, or Time magazine, or CNBC, or The Guardian, or CBC News, or Financial Times, or Bloomberg, or Sky News or Al Jazeera, each one of these international media giants denounced the highway robbery committed by Pakistan’s inebriated establishment.

The brushfire media denunciation of the shameless and brazen theft of the Pakistani electorate’s democratic right forced the US, UK, EU, and UN to call out, without mincing any words, for respect and recognition of the people of Pakistan’s fundamental right to choose their leader.

IK is right in claiming that his party has won two-thirds of the votes cast and that fact must be honored by his enemies. But the establishment still seems fixated on thrusting on the baffled people of Pakistan their chosen puppets.

Pakistan’s regimented and hopelessly compromised mainstream media is rife with projecting the cobbled-together ‘alliance’ between PML-N and PPP as the incoming ruling elite, under the patronizing canopy of the establishment. But instead of Nawaz Sharif, it’s his younger sibling, Shehbaz who’s said to be the next PM.

So, for all intents and purposes, it’s PDM-2 which is being installed in power with the blessings of benighted Bonapartes. Badly tainted thieves and knaves, on their beck-and-call, are their choice of leaders as against an undaunted and outspoken IK.

How would the people of Pakistan, robbed of their mandate, react to this brazen and insulting defiance of their will—so categorically expressed in favor of IK and PTI—remains to be seen. With their iconic leader standing firmly by them, they shouldn’t have any fear of being on their own in standing up to those thumbing their noses at them. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)