IT takes a rare talent to accumulate loss from words when you are never at a loss for words.

Faced with the most potent threat since coming to power, PTI today runs the risk of tripping on what it has always considered its core strength. In the age of communication while fighting a war of communication, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s team may be falling victim to a failure of communication.

This failure can be encapsulated in three distinct points: (1) obsession with opposition at the expense of everything else; (2) obsession with opposition at the expense of everything else; (3) obsession with opposition at the expense of everything else.

And everything else?

This everything else in turn can also be encapsulated in three distinct points: (1) failure to define core areas of strength; (2) failure to defend core areas of weakness; (3) failure to design government’s vision in terms of what it is and not merely what it is not.

Or in other words: the government is trying to bowl every ball as a yorker knowing well the deliveries can turn into half volley.

It is easy to mock, taunt and sneer; not so easy to explain, elaborate and enumerate. PTI is falling into its own communication trap.

The fault lies not in its stars but in its strategy. Ever since he entered the political arena, Imran Khan had framed his identity in terms of what he was not — not corrupt, not dishonest, not a dynast, not in politics for business, not beholden to vested interests and not ready to compromise on principles for political expediency. He painted what he was not in reference to what Nawaz Sharif and Zardari were.

This framing was critical for his political branding. The more he defined Nawaz and Zardari in terms of what he saw them as, the more he got defined in terms of what he wanted himself to be defined as. The more un-Nawaz he was, the more Imran he would be seen. PTI politics therefore became a study in contrasts — beat down Sharifs and Zardaris to build up Imran.

And you know the funny thing? It worked.

When something works, it generates its own legitimacy. For PTI this legitimacy birthed a belief that the core of their politics — the nucleus of it all as it were — was the destruction of Sharifs and Zardaris. This was not policy, or strategy, or planning — it was the party DNA itself.

Today as the elected government of Pakistan, PTI cannot override its own DNA in order to calibrate its situational awareness. Talk to PTI leaders and you hear the same logic regurgitated on reflex: ‘Our core supporters want us to put Sharifs and Zardaris in jail.’ These leaders have convinced themselves — or their leader has convinced them — that this belief got them in power, this belief will keep them in power, and this belief is their passport to the next five-year term in power.

Herein lies the genesis of the PTI government’s failure of communication.

The government is sagging under the weight of its innumerable spokespeople. An army of ministers, advisers, special assistants, and assorted tarjumaan have been tasked to repeat over and over again these words regardless of the topic at hand: ‘corrupt’, ‘money launderers’, ‘thieves’, ‘want to save their loot’, ‘NRO’.

They are so busy saying these words, and so busy receiving accolades for saying these words, that they have little time, little patience, little preparedness and perhaps little capacity to do the following:

Define some positives in terms of Covid-19/NCOC, Ehsaas, gradual recovery of construction and property sector, and social safety plans; while being able to defend and deflect criticism on key areas of concern including inflation, unemployment, wheat, sugar scandals, as well as the absence of any meaningful structural reform.

These are weighty issues and they require weighty arguments by people who can process dense data and detailed policy briefs, condense them into a digestible narrative and disseminate it in a credible and effective manner to a diverse audience. The obsession with the opposition has however blindsided the government’s communicators and their communication to these critical components of effective narrative building.

The result: various polls showing citizens frustrated, dissatisfied and angry at the government on at least two key counts: inflation and unemployment. Both are real. Both bite. Both require an explanation that can, at the very minimum, contextualise them within a larger effort aimed at economic recovery. People would want to be told these two issues are the topmost priority for the government because they are, after all, the topmost priority for the citizens.

The PTI government’s army of ministers, advisers, special assistants and spokespeople have failed to communicate effectively because they are unable or unwilling to comprehend, contextualise and convey much beyond their bequeathed party DNA. It is easy to mock, taunt and sneer; not so easy to explain, elaborate and enumerate. PTI is falling into its own communication trap.

It did not have to be this way. The PTI government had everything going for it since the early days: optimism, excitement, hope and crucial support from state institutions. All PTI had to do was transition to a strategic plane where the obsession with the opposition would have constituted one of many planks of governance. The inability to make this transition — or perhaps a refusal to do so — has brought the PTI government to a stage today where its communication is delivering diminishing returns. Today’s Pakistan feels bitter, toxic and divided. Optimism is being replaced with dread, excitement with foreboding and hope with rancour. The air is acrid with hate. Anger is the default emotion.

No party is a one-trick party unless it makes itself so. Governance requires more than one trick. But if PTI’s communication is to be believed, one trick is all we need — and all we have.

This is not just bad communication, it is bad karma.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Islamabad.

Twitter:****@fahdhusain

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2020