Daily Times

Here is an excerpt from a piece that I wrote for The Express Tribune back in 2012:

“It is with his credibility that he would be able to gel this nation into a powerful tool to fight and defeat the forces of obscurantism. He is a person who believes in moving forward and has no skeletons in the cupboard to draw him back. His growing popularity has cast a spell of doom on all his opponents who are lined up outside his door seeking an alliance. Khan says no not because he is proud, or naïve, but because he has taken upon himself a challenge that would be insurmountable if he were to follow a policy of compromise. He is the harbinger of change that the people of this country have waited for”.

It was Khan against the rest then. It is Khan against the rest even today. Nothing really has changed except that, much against the expectations and crooked efforts of his foes, Khan would be taking oath as the elected prime minister of the country in the next few days.

In a piece ‘Disastrous Decade of Democracy’ for The Guardian, Simon Templar wrote thus in 2017: “Thug life is a term used by gangsters to glorify their law-breaking, heady crime sprees. Nothing describes the misrule of two successive, so-called democratically elected governments in the unstable, under-developed 200 million strong South-Asian state of Pakistan. How thieves, plunderers and freebooters came to rule this nuclear armed state is a sad tale in itself”.

More compelling words follow: “Where Zardari was a street thug, looting millions, forcing neighbours to sell their properties on the cheap, the plunderers from Punjab, whose father made pots and cooking utensils with his bare hands, are now the certified dollar-billionaires, thanks to massive bank defaults and international cuts, commissions and kickbacks”.

Khan can do it. He has extensive support in all provinces within the country which gives him a distinctive federal stature. He commands respect. He is neither corrupt, nor corruptible. What will matter more than anything else are the people he chooses to be part of his team. Do they have the same or matching measure of commitment and resolve? Are they equally clean and not given to inducements? And how well aware they are of the challenges and how empowered they are to address them?

Simon claimed that the sordid tale of bringing the corrupt duo to power had international backing: “The deal with the West was that we bring you back, wash away your past sins and you squeeze the army… The game began and the new army chief General Kiyani turned a blind eye as he brought the devil to sup at the table and was also busy improving his impoverished family’s financial condition. So well this team worked that General Kiyani got an unprecedented 3-year second term, Zardari became a billionaire, the General grew from rags to millionaire and the country went to the dogs”.

He went on to enact a dreary picture: “Now, decades of money-laundering, defaulted bank loans and millions in off-shore accounts and overseas properties stand to be exposed for what they are, the loot and plunder from 200 million poor, uneducated, helpless souls who are forced to sell or kill their children due to lack of justice, poverty and a gloomy future”.

There is so much more that is symptomatic of the grave tragedy that struck Pakistan through these ten years of gross misrule which is contained in this piece that it is well worth a read (https://awaam.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/disastrous-decade-of-democracy-sorry-state-of-the-state-al-pakistan/).

This was the state back in 2017. Far worse were the conditions going into the elections of 2018 where the poor had been deprived even of their basic right to life and bare sustenance. They tottered on the fringes, begging for two miserly morsels every day. They had been shorn of their self-respect as also of their right to hope for a better future.

The duo of the street thug and the penthouse pirates had combined well to bring the state to a disastrous pass, leaving no crevice for light to filter through showing a path out of a deepening morass. What had been carved was virtually a straight line to hell.

With a charter of objectives unheard of in the political annals of the country, Khan was alone when he founded Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). He is alone today when he is the elected prime minister soon to take oath. Any compromises that he would make at this juncture to ensure his stay in the power corridors would only dent his progress towards delivering Pakistan from the clutches of marauding bands of looters and plunderers.

These decrepit crooks and criminals have already found a common cause in knitting together: that of weakening and ultimately dismantling Khan. He needs to be wary of it and ensure that he or his colleagues within the party make no compromise that would dilute the original charter of objectives. It is for the fulfilment of this entire programme that the people have voted PTI into power, and even the slightest belittlement thereof would unleash a severe backlash that would be difficult to contain.

Understandably, Khan is aware of that and remains fully committed to taking the desired initiatives to put the country back on course to deliverance. But, as he moves along, he will be faced with challenges, from within the country and outside.

The initial response from the West has not been heartening. The media unleashed a string of negative stories linking his success with establishment support. This runs contrary to ground realities. All the alleged so-called offspring of the establishment including the “Jeep” brand of independents and the ultra-right concoctions lost heavily.

PTI’s success is not owed to any alleged support of the establishment. Let’s not forget twenty-two years of hard work which has finally brought Khan to the verge of assuming charge in Pakistan as the head of a democratically elected government. He has not been delivered by the military like his predecessors were including the Bhutto/Zardaris and the Sharifs. He has come by chartering a political course underwritten by boundless hard work, courage and commitment with an agenda that Pakistan and its people needed and desired.

Now, he can’t afford to go wrong. He can’t show any weakness. His political opponents sit like vultures, ready to pounce on the first hint of wavering. He has to go the whole hog, and do so with added determination and resolve. This is the big challenge that he and his government would face in the coming days: how to deliver on his electoral promises efficiently and quickly.

Khan can do it. He has extensive support in all provinces within the country which gives him a distinctive federal stature. He commands respect. He is neither corrupt, nor corruptible. What will matter more than anything else are the people he chooses to be part of his team. Do they have the same or matching measure of commitment and resolve? Are they equally clean and not given to inducements? And how well aware they are of the challenges and how empowered they are to address them?

But, such are the breeding grounds of genuine leaders. Being the inveterate fighter that he has always been, none would savour it more than Khan himself.

Let’s be done with the worms of a past!

The writer is a political and security strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute — an Islamabad-based think tank. Email: raoofhasan@hotmail.com. Twitter: @RaoofHasan

Published in Daily Times, August 7^th 2018.