Assassination attempt on Imran Khan

The assassination attempt on PTI chief and former prime minister Imran Khan is highly condemnable. It is the job of the investigators to prove who master-minded this and why; and whether no not it was a lone wolf looking for personal satisfaction and redemption. The logic is tempting but the facts speak otherwise; and this assassination attempt and how the media is treating it re-emphasises my belief in how we as a nation lack in its manners and concerns the important element of objectivity and as a nation thrive on subjectivism. The entire media in Pakistan is a master twister of facts and relishes on the relentless efforts by the employed spin doctors to put the preferred spin to the conspiracy theories and thus any matter instead of getting resolved gets more and more complicated. This wouldn’t happen if we had a political system that was just and delivering but that is also not the case.

There are many who have interest in the immediate removal of Imran Khan from the political scene and if this assassination attempt was to fulfil this ambition then none will ever disclose the role they played in it. Imran Khan as a leader demonstrates many qualities but the three qualities that literally sets him apart from all his political rivals are — reason, passion and determination. I am not saying that his opponents and political competitors are not reasonable; they are, that is why they survive. Reasonable survive but the passionate live — and that is Imran Khan for you. He has captured the imagination of a large majority of the people of Pakistan and he lives in their hearts and minds. Through his words and actions Imran Khan has evoked political themes that have captured people’s imagination which include: battle against the system of status quo, end of dynastic politics, elimination of corruption, concern for poor and underprivileged and the reconstruction of the state as a modern, welfare democratic state. What is wrong with this? Undertakings of a leader come first, achievements next and his popularity comes in the end.

The history of Pakistani politics is the history of the politicians turning to the judiciary, the United States and the military to prolong their stay in power and to seek political salvation. Judiciary has consistently acted as a facilitator, the United States as the manipulator and military always as the catalyst in the end, says Mirza Aslam Beg, the former army chief of Pakistan. This history is being challenged by Imran Khan and he wants to re-write this history and that is why he is seen as a great danger to what Stephen Cohen in his book, The Idea of Pakistan (published in 2004), terms as the five-step dance: “First the army warns what it regards as something done by incompetent and foolish civilians. Second, a crisis leads to army intervention, which is followed by the third step {to} straighten out Pakistan, often by introducing major constitutional changes. Fourth, the army, faced with growing civilian discontent, ‘allows’ civilians back into office, and fifth, the army reasserts itself behind the façade of civilian government.”

After seeing the conduct of politics in the last six or so months in this country one can easily say that there is not much missing in Pakistan except the state and it is because of this reason that someone has to restore the state. A state that is first answerable to its people before it is answerable to the outside world. Who will perform this sacred duty of restoration of the state? It cannot and should not be the military. It has to be a political leader. Edmund Burke who was an Irish-British statesman and a philosopher and who served as a member of parliament between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain defined society as “a partnership … between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” I would like to make a mention of the past military dictators of Pakistan and suggest why this partnership of society between the dead, living and born was negatively affected by their rule.

In 1969 when the first military dictator of Pakistan, President Ayyub Khan, resigned, he didn’t transfer his powers to the Speaker of the Assembly as required under the 1962 constitution. This gifted us another military dictator, President Yahya Khan, for his 33 months of eventful rule in which we lost half of our country. Gen Zia amended the constitution to his liking and gifted this nation religious ideology and religious extremism. The fourth dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, made many mistakes but the worst of them all was to give NRO to the discredited politicians and laid the seeds of our current political predicament.

It is the living that the people of Pakistan look up to. The leadership of today — both the civil and military — carries this huge burden on their shoulders to restore the state as it should be and as it must be. The current conflict of interest is that the government derives its legitimacy from the constitution and parliament but the ousted leader Imran khan draws his legitimacy from the people and considers that he is popularly mandated and powered by them to reconstruct the state.

The latest assassination attempt on him has brought this conflict of interest in the open which clearly means that someone will have to give in. Both ways, Pakistan is paying a huge price for this stalemate — current government continuing to hold on to power and Imran Khan not backing off and continuing with his protests. This can turn very ugly.

The government convictions are no more supporting its direction. The government, no matter how hard it tries, cannot fake reality and Imran Khan is doing everything to create a political reality by sheer force of the people’s will. The government becomes very unpopular and thus there is no value in its continuity. The government must answer the most relevant question of the time: what is the price being paid by Pakistan for it to hold on to power?

Because of increased resentment in the people, more protests and demonstrations are likely to follow and the only solution today is for the government to read the mood of the people and call for early elections.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2022.

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