Daily Times

So Halloween came to Lahore a day early, especially — but not exclusively — for Mian Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Apparently, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) rally has scared the bejeebers out of an already jittery PML-N. The PTI did put up a very impressive show and political players would ignore it only at their peril. In their complacency some have been oblivious to the media and military’s shenanigans over the last several months but it clearly was coming.

Immediately following the PTI’s dharna (sit-in) in Peshawar, I had noted in this column: “The establishment is getting its domestic ducks in a row, in preparation for a showdown with the US over its AfPak endgame. What can serve them better in this than a conglomerate of the martial law’s perennial B team like the Jamaat-e-Islami, pro-jihadists like Sami-ul-Haq and assorted opportunists? The twelfth man has always hoped that the establishment will grant him the political test cap one day. His hypocrisy may actually earn him the captaincy of the junta’s ‘B’ team this time” (‘The establishment’s twelfth man’, Daily Times, April 28, 2011).

Well, here we are six months later and the ‘saviour’ has announced not only his arrival but that the ‘change’, too, has arrived. Some pundits are now retrofitting their positions to gear up for the journey to the land of milk and honey that Imran Khan has pledged to steer everyone to. Change, really, one may ask. Neither can a neo-jihadist be a Pakistani Barack Obama nor his cheerleaders Bruce Springsteen. A doppelganger of change and a faux populist most certainly have appeared on the horizon.

Imran Khan claims that he is not an establishment man, saying: “Woh mujhay kya de saktay hein?” (What can they offer me?). For starters one should not be looking for a pay stub in this day and age and indeed there is no reason to doubt Imran Khan’s personal financial integrity. But the benedictions of the mighty deep state come in many ways and so do the return of favours by the ones who get blessed with these bounties.

The PTI’s Sunday rally at Lahore’s Minar-e-Pakistan did little to dispel the impression that despite his pretence to be the prince charming, Imran Khan still comes across as the deep state’s voice. He remains an unrepentant apologist of the Taliban who wears his born-again religiosity on his sleeve. But more ominously, he has no qualms about subverting a democratic dispensation — by civil disobedience if needed — to achieve his personal and ideological goals. That the PTI manifesto pledges to uphold the 1973 Constitution does not matter to this former cohort of the military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf.

At this rally, Imran Khan — however lame his oratory skills might be — said everything that Pakistan’s security establishment has been saying and wanting the politicians to say. He wants a truce with the good, the bad and the ugly Taliban. So does the establishment — heck they have been signing truce upon truce with every Taliban leader one can think of. Imran Khan does not want army action against the insurgents and wants to withdraw the army from the conflict zones. Well, guess what, so does the Pakistan Army. Not only did the army not want to act against Mullah Fazlullah aka Mullah Radio for years, they are loathe to go after the foreign insurgents a la Siraj Haqqani, Mullah Omar and of course Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Imran Khan wants to ‘help the US get out of Afghanistan fast’ and plans to hand over FATA to the traditional tribal elders (Maliks). This is his magic wand, waving which will make terrorism and terrorist safe havens disappear. One wonders if he has the faintest idea that thousands of tribal Maliks have been slaughtered in cold blood by the very savages he wants to negotiate with. He goes blue in the face lamenting the drone attacks against the foreign insurgents holed up in FATA but God forbid if he ever mentions how the terrorists have ravaged Kurram Agency. In fact, quite the opposite is true and the architect of Kurram’s misery, General Ali Jan Orakzai, remains Imran Khan’s role model for dealing with the terrorist menace in FATA. It would have been too much to expect him to utter a word about the Hazara genocide in Quetta lest it may alienate his party leaders hobnobbing with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s parent outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba or their jihadist cadres attending his rallies.

The PTI leader has been hanging out with Sheikh Rashid of Rawalpindi and early in his speech hit a low that even the foul-mouthed Rashid might envy. Imran Khan’s accusation against Ambassador Husain Haqqani, making wild allegations and that too based on a story by Mansoor Ijaz — a discredited ‘mediator’, neo-con sympathiser and proponent of Bush’s Iraq war — was simply pathetic. One wonders about his motive to quote a person who boasts of ties to both India and global jihadists. While a separate column is needed to address this issue, it just goes to show the shallowness of the PTI leader and that in his desperation for power he can stoop to any level.

There was a lot of fluff about ending corruption, tax evasion and even the highhandedness of the land officers (patwaris) in Imran Khan’s speech but not a word about how this can be actualised. And of course no word about the fortunes amassed by the Generals at home and abroad. In the absence of a cogent programme to flesh up this hollow sloganeering, one has to look at the team that Imran Khan plans to field. The biggest success of this rally touted by the PTI is that ‘match-winning bowlers’, i.e. veteran politicians capable of winning the elections are lining up for party tickets. The PTI website even lists many political turncoats who have joined them.

Alexis de Tocqueville had once written: “It is a lesser question for the partisans of democracy to find means of governing the people, than to get the people to choose the men most capable of governing.” Imran Khan has failed miserably to select and groom a capable and honest team in his 15-year political career and it is unlikely to happen in the 15 months leading up to the elections. With old political hacks and the security establishment by his side, he can give the incumbents a run for their money but bring change, he Khan’t.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com. He tweets at http://twitter.com/mazdaki