KARACHI:
US President George W Bush used the two correlative conjunctions — either and or — to convey his veiled threat to Pakistan after the watershed incident of 9/11. This Hobson’s choice has ironically become a mainstay of PTI’s diehard followers. There is a large segment of educated and financially stable Pakistanis, including those overseas, with whom you cannot have a decent and meaningful dialogue about Imran Khan’s lacklustre performance as a politician or his recurrent administrative failures. The first gauntlet they pick up is: Either you are with Imran Khan, or you are with the plunderers — meaning Sharifs and Zardaris. If you say that you are with none of them but Pakistan, they come hard on you with some illusionary achievements of Imran Khan’s ongoing tenure. The push becomes a shove when these blind followers make you believe that everything is hunky-dory, and the country is moving in the right direction for the first time in our history. The delusive narrative is then buttressed with a lot of slanted and even false economic indicators as well as fairy tales of a Naya Pakistan. I quote a verse by Faiz to avoid being bitter and harsh for those who continue to weave sweet dreams in a nightmarish regime:
Ham saada hi aisay thai kee youn hi pazirayee
Her baar khizaan ayee samjhay ke bahaar ayee
Haroon Rashid Siddiqi
Canada
Published in The Express Tribune, November 4th, 2021.
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