Daily Times

The evidence, for whatever it is worth, is stupefying. Three recent ‘polls’, one by the Pew Research Centre, of mostly urban adults, one ‘online’ poll with presumably no sampling by Newsweek Pakistan, and one Facebook ‘poll’ have found Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan to be the most popular political leader in Pakistan.

Notwithstanding the methodology of these polls, or trying to speculate whether the popularity thus gauged will translate into actual votes, we are back to the feeling of stupefaction. It is quite clear from these polls that there is a sizeable section of at least the urban population in Pakistan, and perhaps a large majority of those with access to the internet, that lack basic critical thinking skills. Since demographics are not clear, one would presume that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed, online at least, would be the youth.

It is beyond numbing to find out that the future of the country, the youth, cannot put two and two together to arrive at logical conclusions. It is not as if Imran Khan is a man of few words, or that his words are not carried by the media day in and day out. There is literally no excuse one can come up with for the intellect of Imran’s fan base.

Imran Khan’s rhetoric against corruption is understandably appealing, as is his known financial integrity. People charmed by him speak of his ‘honesty’. They are wont to differentiate between financial integrity and personal and political honesty. How can someone who lacks the courage to face questions over abandonment of an offspring be assumed to be ‘honest’? Contrary to what Khan tells the world, the refusal to own one’s child and to abandon it, is not a personal matter for anyone, let alone for someone bidding to lead a country on a manifesto of social justice.

It will also probably come as news to the fan base that actions such as Khan’s championing of General (retd) Pervez Musharraf’s military coup, and the dictator’s referendum to continue in power thereafter, and convenient drop-scene of said support at election time in 2002, are generally considered to be opportunistic in nature, not morally honest in character. Their darling has been apologising and confessing to having made a mistake — but maintains that he did so only because he had been given assurances that General Musharraf would root out corruption!

The fan base forgives their gullible but honest hero, who has now come of age and would never in the future support any adventurism by the military.

However, malfunction of electric signals in their brains fails to spark cognition when they see two rallies led by the leader to protest drone strikes in the wake of Raymond Davis/CIA/ISI fiasco and amid the military’s posturing to the Americans. The first in Islamabad, which failed to produce more than a few dozen youngsters in attendance getting ‘garmi mein kharab’ (rotting in summer heat), and the second one in Peshawar, duly given a helping hand by the boots and the spooks, with thousands provided for attendance.

But if these rallies failed to provoke understanding, Imran Khan tried to oblige with thundering condemnation of the president and prime minister demanding their resignations after the military’s monumental failure to protect Osama bin Laden, the country’s sovereignty or any vestiges of their own perceived excellence or professionalism. Khan did not so much as utter a whimper against either the armed forces or its intelligence agencies, whose actual complicity or incompetence stood wretchedly exposed on May 2.

The mental faculties of Khan’s supporters by this time, however, had become so ‘garmi mein kharab’, that they could not find anything wrong with his astonishing bluster. They continued to struggle with arriving at perfectly straightforward conclusions on the democratic credentials of their hero.

Imran Khan is very helpful, if nothing else. With a fan base still in a hallucinogenic stupor of a democratic knight in shining armour riding towards them from the mirage over a parched land, Khan helpfully called for the military to assist the Supreme Court with a helping boot — per Article 190 of the constitution.

Khan wants the military to intervene, to sack the elected government of corrupt and disobedient politicians, and hold early elections. So that his heat-treated fan base might elect him under the military’s benevolent supervision. So loud and clear is Khan this time about what he wants and how he wants it done that one could fall in the trap of hope that even sun-stroked minds might now appreciate his political pretentions.

But hope from a body that wants to be led by someone who long ago haughtily trashed Charles Darwin’s seminal theory of evolution, the lifework of someone considered a giant amongst thinkers, as half-baked? In dismissing out of hand the vast amounts of scientific research that built consensus around the theory, Khan laid bare only his own ignorance and his hubris. But for the salivating fans to see? No.

And hope from those who cannot see the hypocrisy of a starched white shalwar kameez changed for shorts just before landing in Islamabad and calling for Islamic values and protection of Islam; from those who cannot see the cynicism in a hard-partying man making fundamentalist Islam — straight from the political science class of late General Ziaul Haq — a rallying call?

I am afraid not.

The writer is a journalist and can be reached at gulnbukhari@gmail.com