What does Imran Khan believe in?

The unprecedented hype to the buildup to the Senate elections lived up to expectations as the ruling party saw itself get outmanoeuvered in the race for top election posts. The PML-N had backed the outgoing Senate chairman, who had undoubtedly managed to pioneer a raise in the profile of his position and the Senate and later a senior leader of his own party.

Opposition to the ruling party in the Senate was expected, what had kept analysts busy was the mechanism, nature and ultimately effectiveness of this opposition. The curiosity of the analysts was rewarded when in a surprising turn of events, which some have alleged to have been “engineered,” the PTI decided to form a tactical alliance with the PPP. What transpired then was the election of the first chairman of the Senate from Balochistan, undoubtedly a belated achievement for the polity. And while the ruling party cried foul over what they alleged was a “managed” election for the top seat, as the dust settles, the allegations are becoming background noise.

Surely enough, whether through masterful engineering, or through unprecedented, but not unexpectedly tumultuous politics, the PTI and the PPP were able to outthink and outmanoeuvre the ruling party. This piece is not about the Senate elections, however. It’s not about whether they were engineered or not, or whether in a realpolitik arena the ruling party should reasonably have seen this coming. It’s about Imran Khan.

When the election for the top posts in the Senate were over, and as members of the political spectrum descended onto the TV screens of the nation to make sense of it all, Imran Khan shared a Facebook post.

To those, if any, unfamiliar with Imran’s Facebook page, and the page of his party, it is a particularly special one. The page is flooded with daily DSLR quality pictures of Imran Khan often doing nothing at all. Often the post will have Imran Khan smiling, or looking sidewards rather inspiringly, with a quote by Imran, usually and somewhat inexplicably about cricket as a caption for the picture. I’m not too sure what the point of these posts are.

As the top posts of the election were decided the official PTI page shared a post with Imran smiling coyly in a situation that was surely unrelated, with the caption, “And they told me, I don’t know politics.” I’m not too sure what the point of this post was either.

Was it to beg the question, as to what politics Imran actually refers to? Considering that’s the only reasonable derivation of the post. If so, the post succeeds, and we now ask, what politics does Imran Khan believe in?

It would be rudimentary to dig out statements by Imran where he is rather unkind to the PPP and Asif Zardari. If one is to dig only slightly deeper we would come across Imran’s vehement and consistent claims that the PTI will never ally with a Zardari-led PPP. But everyone, and most importantly the electorate is now reasonably aware of Imran’s consistently anti-Zardari rhetoric. Often in Pakistani politics, rhetoric is just that, rhetoric. Parties are quick to subscribe to an existing political culture that allows them to tip-toe across the aisle and form alliances which were previously unthinkable, case in point the new alliance between the JI and PML-N. Considering that this is now part of the political culture subscribed to by the mainstream parties, the electorate is also able to digest it without much of a revolt.

This is, however, where the problem for Imran begins. The premise of the PTI’s politics is negative. Rather than positively claiming to pursue a cause unique or revolutionary, Imran has brought up the PTI as the anti-thesis to mainstream politics, the break in status quo, the NOT your average-Pakistani political party. The premise of the former premise is an uncompromising rejection of politics of compromise. While the PPP and the PML-N are political players in themselves as the status quo, and so can exist in a vacuum, the PTI as Khan has imagined it, is simply the rejection of the status quo, which can only exist in relation to the status quo itself. That’s how Imran Khan plans to get votes, by promising not to do what has been done, allegedly for decades in Pakistan, by casting the PTI as “different.” But what happens when it turns out it’s not “different”?

When Imran Khan reaches out to PPP co-chairman Asif Zardari it is seen as Imran compromising his position and his standing. When the latter reaches out to the former Asif Zardari is praised as political master strategist. If there is a seemingly impossible problem, with power centres locking horns, Zardari can act as a masterful power broker. He defuses the situation and earns the praise of political and non-political admirers alike. Of course, his strategy is premised on political compromise. But that’s the point. While Khan so adamantly resists political compromise, thinking of it as morally compromising, others like Zardari embrace it, they preach it and they practise it. And so, when you find Zardari reaching out his hand across the aisle to a previously “impossible alliance,” you appreciate his politicking, and his cunning.

For someone whose singular claim to power is being NOT Zardari, dealing with Zardari does not look good. Imran’s decades of anti-status quo politics have rendered the PTI incapable of existing singularly on its own, without reflecting negatively on the status quo. The PTI has modelled itself like the moon which needs the light emanating from a corrupt, politically compromised sun to allow it to exist, if there is no light for the PTI to reflect, for us at earth it may as well not exist.

And so, when Imran Khan professes of knowing “politics,” it is worth asking what politics he refers to. Unlike the PML-N and the PPP, the PTI cannot afford to indulge in politics of compromise when the same threatens its very existence. The PTI and Imran Khan cannot occasionally indulge in political compromise, when convenience requires so, and ally themselves with the very entities they have for so long professed to upend. The electorate, though being exceptionally generous, is not extravagant enough to forgive Imran for indulging the status quo, considering his only possible self-professed value is upending the same. Far from illustrating his knowledge of politics, Imran then may have made a strategic political mistake just to maintain his opposition to the ruling party. With Zardari getting his candidate in and maintaining his political prowess, Imran has been seen to do business with what he has previously maintained to be the “bad guys.” Perhaps, it’s a tiring Imran, wary of losing elections and then some by-elections, wary of being the eternal opposition, compromising now in hope for greater power. Perhaps it’s none of that. What it is surely not, is good politics.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2018.

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