FIGURING out Imran Khan’s politics has, of late, become very much like trying to read tea leaves. One must swirl his words around, turn them upside down, and then attempt to divine for themselves what they must mean. Consider, for example, his announcement at the conclusion of the second Haqeeqi Azadi march that his party would be quitting the provincial assemblies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. Around three weeks later, we are still asking: ‘Will he?’ and ‘When?’. There is no straightforward answer, perhaps because Mr Khan, too, has started enjoying the riddles and mystery that surround each political step that he takes. It is also quite confusing why he has taken to staggering key announcements regarding all his major decisions. During his most recent long march, there was considerable confusion as the nation kept guessing when exactly he would finally head to Islamabad, but then, he dropped that plan altogether. Now, since announcing that the PTI has decided to quit the KP and Punjab provincial assemblies, he has only announced that he will reveal the date on which the assemblies will be dissolved during another jalsa on Dec 17. Is this a strategy to exert pressure on the federal government, or to buy time while he figures a way out?

On a related note, it was quite baffling to hear the former prime minister recently demand that the army should be ‘neutral’. Has he not made it clear in the past that he believes ‘neutral’ is something only animals can be? Surely, Mr Khan could not be expecting our respectable armed forces to start acting like animals now? In the absence of any helpful clarification, how does one go about distinguishing when ‘neutral’ really just means ‘neutral’ and not ‘animal’ in Mr Khan’s eyes? Though such flip-flops are quite amusing, the PTI chairman should consider being more forthright in the days to come. Prevarication and obfuscation rarely arouse much confidence in the public and are generally considered a sign of either dishonesty or lack of self-belief. We are at a critical juncture. Instead of making matters more complicated, the former prime minister must either execute what he promised or simply admit he acted in haste and seek a better approach. Dissolving the assemblies does not seem to be in anyone’s interest at the moment, and he can easily walk back his decision without many regrets. What has he to lose?

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2022