They come and go

After the rapid exits of opportunistic leaders from PTI, Imran must revisit his approach to politics and power.

Since Imran Khan’s Lahore rally in October last year, we have seen three trends in Pakistani politics. First, the mass gathering that Imran was able to generate, for the first time in a quarter century, demonstrated the popular discontent that the people have with the present rulers of Punjab. Before him, Benazir Bhutto and her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, led even bigger crowds in Lahore. The people of Lahore or any big city or region attending a rally voluntarily and enthusiastically is a good sign of shifting political loyalties. At a perceptual level at least, this is what the rally accomplished. More than that perhaps, the event turned out to be a milestone in Imran’s political career. For the first time, the two major national parties, the PPP and the PML-N, began to consider Imran a real challenger to the power and social constituencies that they have built over decades.

Second, the rally transformed an idea into a popular belief that political change from old to new leaders was possible. People all over the country, across ethnic divides, and mostly in the younger age groups, who did not identify with any party and were quite disappointed with dynastic politicians, overwhelmingly embraced the slogan of change — whatever it means to them. Imran, for the first time, entered the realm of popular politics through a strong and appropriate message that hit the right popular chords.

Third, two categories of politicians — the dynastic and the second-third tier of political aspirants — began to join the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). One understands the acceptance of the second-third tier into the PTI’s fold but cannot understand why Imran opened the gates to opportunists who have changed party affiliations several times during their careers. It is neither a secret nor an unexplainable puzzle why dynastic politicians leave one party to join another. It is always the lure of power — better prospects of a new party, leader and movement or a new coalition of ‘like-minded’ groups. The parties that welcome them have a similar interest in gaining power because the numbers in the assemblies determine whether a leader and his party will be in the opposition or in government. Being in the opposition has never been a choice for the dynastic political class.

The PTI had two possible choices to make with the popular upsurge that saw dynastic politicians knocking at its doors. First, it could work on launching a social movement with a popular base focusing on a manifesto of change. It was possible for Imran to do so but it might have taken him more time, required more hard work and better leadership skills. The second choice before it was to opt for the traditional approach of coalition-building among the electable members of the ruling dynasties at a constituency level. He was ill-advised to take this route to power. He must have realised that the post-Lahore rally crowd that joined him, saw for themselves a new opening. Imran celebrated their joining as he thought they would strengthen him and the PTI.

All such choices — if not carefully evaluated and decisions not made with a cold-blooded cost and benefit analysis — produce unintended consequences. Two of these are quite apparent today. The first is that the party, by all indications, has become internally divided and may continue to give this impression unless Imran succeeds in putting the house in order. The second trend is the rapid exit of dynastic party leaders who have joined and left other parties and power groups before and will have no qualms about doing it again one more time.

One may call this opportunism but what else is the ideology of such dynastic leaders? Imran must have known this before he calculated the damage and should now revisit his approach to politics and power.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2012.