Mardan legislator qualifies for a Ramazan show host

With his looks and chaste style of dressing, the PTI activist can certainly ensure ratings.

Ali Mohammad Khan is a youthful first-timer to the national assembly from Mardan. With his looks, chaste style of dressing and the capacity to spin a religion-based narrative, this PTI activist can certainly host a ratings-ensuring show during the next Ramazan for any television network. Speaking in the national assembly, though, he must always keep in mind the fact that he represents a definite political party and political parties essentially relate to a distinct ‘message’. Digressions from it not only confuse people but also dent the ultimate image of the political party concerned in the end.

If you seriously try to fathom the core constituency of PTI, this party seems firmly connected to the anger, frustration and aspirations of our fast growing middle classes. They feel that the political system and structures that we inherited from the bad old days of colonialism are no more workable in this age of fast connectivity and media’s access to facts, crystallized in data-pies. We need to enforce a form of governance that is transparent and merit-based.

Religion, no doubt, remains relevant to this narrative, but you do not need to wear it on your sleeves. Imran Khan regularly prays five-time a day but does not mind mingling with the crowd flaunting their charms and bodily assets while attending a charity ball held to collect donations to protect elephants from reckless poachers. His core constituency, or the ‘base’ as the Americans would call it, never feels upset about it.

Viciously disregarding the obvious ingredients of Imran Khan’s ‘base,’ his opponents from the so-called liberal camp continue to deride him as “Taliban Khan.” A brilliant music band of youthful singers, Beghairat Brigade, even described the PTI as “the good-looking Jama’at Islami” in an instantly hit song, Aaloo Anday.

Imran Khan and his media managers never bother to define the PTI’s identity and the message, though. Probably, the compulsions of political expediency justify their ambivalence in this respect. Speeches made in the national assembly are serious business, however, and you cannot afford conveying conflicting and contradictory messages from the benches of one political party while speaking in an elected house.

During the budget session, another youthful first-timer from the PTI benches had already shocked media by aggressively demanding that Mumtaz Qadri, who killed a sitting Governor of Punjab in a posh market of Islamabad on the excuse of “defending Islam,” should be forgiven and released. In the context of seeking mercy for Qadri from the floor of national assembly, the sermon Ali Mohammad Khan delivered Tuesday sounded odd and confusing to many ears.

Widely quoting from the Holy Quran, this PTI member took on the government, too aggressively, for its backtracking on the issue of hanging murderers duly sentenced to death by regular courts. He kept insisting that the Nawaz government took the U-turn on this issue to please the international donor agencies and their hypocritical concerns for human rights. With usual vigour of a spirited Mullah, he firmly defended the notion of eye for an eye. Islam, he kept thundering, clearly prescribes death for murderers. A Muslim can simply not violate the categorically defined injunctions in this respect. The execution of murderers is rather obligatory precisely as Muslims have to pray five-time a day and annually pay Zakat from their incomes. “If we stopped the hangings today while succumbing to the pressure of foreign donors, there certainly would come a day when they will force us to stop praying and paying Zakat,” he concluded. For another time, no PTI senior bothered to clarify whether Ali Mohammad Khan spoke for the party and they went on with a business-as-usual manner. Good luck
to them.

One felt extremely disappointed with Tuesday’s proceedings, anyway. It was a day reserved for private initiatives in legislation and no less than 20 items were put on the agenda for the same purpose. Most movers of these items were not present when their names were called to stand up and proceed with the business. In record 15 minutes, the assembly ‘dispensed’ with the given agenda. Sheikh Rashid Ahmad still tried to spin media-attracting stories when speaking on the issue of banning beggars in Islamabad. After him, cutting across the party divide speaker after speaker rose from different benches to speak on issues that were too local and generally related to city not even the provincial administration. Front benches of both the government and the opposition looked scandalously deserted. In the lobbies and the ministerial chambers, not one person from the PML-N was available to explain as to why the Prime Minister felt the need of addressing the nation Monday and behaved like a gloomy narrator of doom. Everything looked sad and bleak in the Parliament House this Tuesday.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2013.