A FAMOUS king once said, “after me, the deluge”, while another emperor claimed, “I am the revolution”. Therefore Prime Minister Imran Khan was in good company when he proclaimed on Friday, “I am democracy”. Certainly, the prime minister’s chutzpah may compensate for what is missing among his numerous virtues. In the present context however, he may have done himself no favours by choosing his words without care. The hubris of power ill suits any leader struggling to govern through a weak government. Mr Khan’s speech at a lawyers’ forum may have been sarcastic by choice, but the arguments he put forward will raise more questions about the way the government is run than about the shenanigans of the opposition. For instance, when he referred to former DG ISI Lt Gen Zaheerul Islam demanding the resignation of the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif, it came across as an endorsement of the retired spymaster’s tactics. He also said that he had nothing to worry about the intelligence agency finding out anything about him because he had nothing to hide. Again, this sounded like a validation of the security apparatus’s penchant for probing into the lives of elected leaders.

Such statements invariably create an impression that the top political leadership sees nothing wrong with the military holding politicians to account for their acts of omission and commission. It is peculiar that someone who claims “I am democracy” seems to have no objection to an intelligence agency playing the role of arbiter in the country’s political affairs. This is not for the first time that the prime minister has traversed this path, which suggests that these remarks are not a slip of the tongue but a reflection of his thoughts. Such beliefs require a rethink. The military has a role to play in advising the government on matters of national security, but it should not be needlessly involved in issues that an elected leadership has to deal with. By politicians repeatedly invoking the military as the ‘umpire’, the national institution is dragged into needless controversy. The prime minister is fond of saying that his government and the military are on the same page, but he needs to differentiate this from accepting the military’s role as a supra-political player.

Friday’s speech has also reinforced the image of a government that is refusing to look beyond the opposition. Almost the whole of Mr Khan’s speech mocked his political opponents and there was very little by way of the government’s plans to control runaway inflation and unemployment. More than halfway through its term, the government should really be getting over its obsession with political opponents and speaking more about policies. However, increasingly, it appears that the PTI government is unable to grow out of this long-running phase. This is hardly the way to run a democracy.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2020