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THIS week’s return to dynastic rule hardly qualifies as a celebratory moment in Pakistan’s chequered political trajectory. We can leave to future historians to decide whether it’s a step forward or backward.
Perhaps a few drops of consolation can be squeezed out of the fact that it was the first instance of a prime minister being toppled through a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. But even that experience was soured by the demonstrably incompetent former prime minister’s refusal to play ball.
Facing, by hook or by crook, the loss of his parliamentary majority, Imran Khan could have chosen to shift to the opposition benches with a modicum of dignity. That’s the norm in established democracies. Instead, he seems to have fumbled for the nuclear option, reportedly seeking to replace the army chief. He appears to have been pointed to the exit route.
It was quite clearly a case of buyer’s remorse. The forces responsible for helping to propel Imran Khan into power by cobbling together what could be seen as a confederacy of dunces after his PTI fell short of a majority in 2018, eventually realised that ignoring the ‘caveat emptor’ warning stamped across his forehead was a grievous error.
It was unwise to see Khan as a feasible alternative.
Ignoring the lessons of history could be cited as a key contributor to Pakistan’s decline. It’s easy to forget but useful to remember that the Sharif brothers were protégés of Ziaul Haq, and that in the first flush of post-Zia semi-democratisation, ISI cobbled together the IJI in an initially abortive effort to thwart the ascendancy of Benazir Bhutto and her PPP.
But when the IJI also failed to measure up in the reckoning of its sponsors, they exhibited few qualms in getting rid of it. The quest for an acceptable alternative has been ongoing since the 1990s, barely interrupted by the Musharraf interregnum.
Imran Khan appears to have been talent-spotted not long after the Melbourne World Cup triumph in 1992, when he was flirting with the idea of a political platform but often denying it in public. Shortly before entering the arena, he offered a glimpse of his inclinations when a bomb blast shook his pet project, the Shaukat Khanum Memorial hospital in Lahore.
He was there to greet the then Punjab chief minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif at the site of the attack, but demurred when the prime minister did her duty and came calling, instead, launching invective against Benazir Bhutto. In an April 1996 column in these pages, I raised concerns about his charmless naiveté before concluding: “Imran Khan does, of course, have every right to participate in politics, even if his experience of power play is limited to cricket board intrigues. He may even surprise sceptics like me. But a great many questions will have to plainly be answered before that transpires.
“In the meanwhile, the over-enthusiastic faithful would do well to remember that it’s wise to be wary of Pied Pipers, particularly when it is not clear who is calling the tune.”
It was an overriding suspicion in those days that the ex-cricketer reportedly dubbed ‘Im the Dim’ during his unremarkable Oxford years was being groomed for greater things, allegedly by former intel chief Hamid Gul. The man dubbed ‘the godfather of the Taliban’ was no longer around by the time Khan was deemed fit to serve as the public face of a hybrid regime. And an extended fit of buyer’s remorse culminated in his political demise this past week.
The need for an alternative to the rule of the Sharif and Bhutto-Zardari families has not diminished, but it should be plain by now that whoever considered Imran Khan to be the right answer was asking the wrong question.
In the dying days of his administration, the outgoing regime tapped the rich vein of eager anti-Americanism that runs through much of the Global South by claiming the domestic feud had transcontinental dimensions. That’s an easy button to push, given the long and troubling history of invariably disastrous US interventions in Pakistan and across the hemisphere.
In this instance, though, it’s hard to imagine the State Department being sufficiently bothered by Imran Khan’s predilections to push for regime change. After all, in the perspective from Washington, Pakistan’s strategic value has diminished over the years, particularly after the US retreat from Afghanistan.
And the piece of paper the ex-prime minister has been brandishing as a badge of honour probably ought to be crumpled up and cast into history’s dustbin, where it rightfully belongs.
It’s hard to imagine the PTI offering much of a challenge at the next elections, whenever they occur, given that martial and pecuniary support has fallen away. A less unintelligent alternative to the big two would nonetheless be most welcome.
Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2022
