Imran Khan’s hope and their choice

Former prime minister Imran Khan’s jalsa at Minar-e-Pakistan Lahore was a huge success. Even a blind person can see the numbers, the people turning out to support the former prime minister who was unnecessarily ousted from power under very dubious and unconvincing political circumstances. Today, people are rallying around Khan’s political ideas in huge numbers. A Pakistani society visibly fractured for a very long time today under Khan’s leadership is suddenly giving a wholesome look.

Imran Khan has taken the political battle away from the current government’s comfort zone and he has done that by creating a clear division in the country’s politics — a division that is based on politics of ideology and not a division on religious and ethnic lines. The political parties in the government, almost all of them, are represented by ethnic and religious groups whereas the people coming forward to support Khan and his ideology belong to all sections of society, from all over Pakistan; and in this, there is good news for the country.

There is talk of what can these escalating political differences and instability lead this country to? Some analysts have gone too far to suggest that there can be chaos, anarchy and civil war-like conditions in the country. What these analysts forget is that Imran Khan leads no ethnic or religious grouping like PPP, ANP, BAP, and JUI-F. He is leading and fighting the people’s battle for the survival of the entire country. If we look at the countries that experienced political instability or faced civil war situations such as Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Lebanon and Sri Lanka, we find that political instability and civil war-like situations in these countries happened because the political groups fighting these wars were divided along ethnic and religious lines. Imran Khan and his party represent the biggest political group in this fight for political dominance in which his propagated nationalism is not ethnic or religious nationalism that divides the country but nationalism that is redefining loyalty to the country the way it was never defined before. Despite being utterly disappointed with the premier institutions of the country which he thinks did not stand by him when it mattered the most, he continues to advocate the people how important it is to respect these institutions. Propagating this in his own words Khan says, “Even me and my life is not important… what is important is the continued adherence to the dignity and respect of Pakistan’s military and its judiciary.”

Imran Khan’s political ideas strike a chord and resonate with people who compare and see the very character of politics changing right before their own eyes. They are witnessing a government that does not respect moral worthiness or merit as necessary political essentiality to hold public offices. People believe in Khan when he warns them that Pakistan will cease to remain Quaid-e-Azam’s Pakistan if it is not led to freedom and liberated from the clutches of a ruling oligarchy whose hands are deeply drenched in corruption, fraud, dishonesty, exploitation and persecution and victimisation of political opponents.

Imran Khan keeps reminding people of how he was working to create a strong and modern Pakistan which could present its robust face to the world and which could hold its own amongst the rest. Men, women, old and young, and even children listen to him attentively when he sells them the narrative that he didn’t deserve to be replaced — not by criminals whose only qualification to the office they hold now is self-preservation, to ensure they are protected from law and to gain financial benefits from the offices they hold. And people fume with rage and anger when he says that it is only in our country that being a criminal is not a disqualification and criminals can hold the highest public office or be a member of the cabinet. If credibility is why the world listens to you — with this lot ruling us can we still be credible with the outside world?

So, what is happening in Pakistan today is that people are seeing in Imran Khan a leader who is their protector, an enabler of their hopes as well as their anger and their hatred; and the good thing in this is that more and more people are joining his battle of creating a unified and incorruptible Pakistan that is sovereign and which doesn’t take dictates from outside. What is good about Kaptan is that he is organising people around his political beliefs. He is well-read and quotes lavishly from history in his extempore speeches. What history tells us is that the elimination of hope incentivises violence. So far there is hope that early elections will be held in this country. Who did what is not what preoccupies Khan’s mind? His absolute focus is on early elections and the removal of the incumbent government. Protests are always the last-ditch effort to fix any wrong or bring a change. Optimists form the core of any protest that leads people to seek the desired change but when that change doesn’t come and the government of the day decides to play hardball things can quickly take a turn towards the worst.

Three civil-military engagements in the current week have tried to give an impression that the military is resolutely and decisively standing behind this government — and why not it is their constitutional responsibility. First, the meeting between the COAS and the PM; second, PM’s visit to North Waziristan; and third the National Security Committee meeting which was headed by the PM and attended by the services chiefs. These meetings may have bestowed upon the current prime minister himself and his cabinet the much-needed military nod and approval; but in the eyes of the people of this country, the current moral, legal and political status and legitimacy of this government remain questionable.

I wrote in my last column that people are not happy, that they are frustrated and they are angry and I requested that the powers that be read the mood of people correctly. That doesn’t seem to be happening. The absolute sovereign and the true guarantors of state security are the people of this country. The people of this country love their military and when they see the “provokers of military hate, underminers of its dignity and prestige, and conductors of military bashing in the past” become the rulers who can once again command and direct the defenders of the nation whom they abused in the past then people’s heads bow down with shame.

In a clearly divided political landscape in this country what we have today is a political spectrum, on one side of which is a very unpopular government, and on the other side is a mass of very unhappy and angry people. The military that exists to serve the people and which people hold in very high esteem and high regard must know that it cannot afford to lose the support of its people. The correct reading of the mood of the people is absolute military essentiality. Losing people’s support could be catastrophic not only for the military but also for this country.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2022.

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