Daily Times

Everybody needs good news. For a nation as dented and daunted as Pakistan, the novelty of PTI and the upright reputation of its chief was welcomed with open arms. However, we should not confuse our inherent desire for change for actual change. Imran Khan’s victory is a one-in-a-million anomaly where multiple factors aligned to pave a way for him to finally become Prime Minister.

This glitch in Pakistan’s political pattern has more to do with the alignment of the stars so to speak than any systemic change in the status quo. The chances of this repeating for another are slim.

The Kaptaan’s political struggle is a testament to his determination and conviction. That’s an irrefutable fact. What’s concerning is that if it took him this long, how long it would take someone else?

To answer that, we have to first understand what all had to happen before Khan could become the premier. He needed fame, fortune, location, and luck.

Firstly, Imran Khan for most of his life has been the most celebrated Pakistani in the world. During his county days, the young athlete’s good-looks and charm led him to mingle with everyone from Bollywood celebrities to British Royalty. After winning the Cricket World-Cup for Pakistan, he became a national hero. His subsequent philanthropic efforts only enhanced his stature at home and abroad. That fame allowed him to build a political party around him.

Secondly, Imran Khan may be notoriously frugal but his political benefactors are not. He has campaigned in private helicopters and private planes. His party has organized massive rallies each costing millions of rupees if not billions.

The sound-system bill alone for the 2014 sit-in was allegedly more than a million dollars. Before the state took over it was PTI patrons that were self-funding private investigations against electoral riggings and illegal assets of Nawaz Sharif abroad. These are only a few examples of the costs of a political struggle. If the PTI were not flushed with resources, they would never have been able to finance their growth from a single seat party to a parliamentary majority.

Thirdly, Imran Khan’s 300 Kanal Bani-Gala residence and base-of-operations is located a stone’s-throw away from the Parliament. The closest provincial capital to Islamabad is Peshawar, where PTI’s devoted Chief Minister sat. This gave PTI the strategic capability to constantly pressurise the government with sit-ins and protests literally at their doorstep. That’s how PTI achieved their demands of by-elections in 2015 and a ‘Panamagate’ investigation, which eventually got then PM Nawaz Sharif toppled. Had PTI been based out of any other city this would not have been possible.

Imran Khan may be notoriously frugal but his political benefactors are not. He has campaigned in private helicopters and private planes. His party has organized massive rallies each costing millions of rupees if not billions. The sound-system bill alone for the 2014 sit-in was allegedly more than a million dollars. Before the state took over it was PTI patrons that were self-funding private investigations against electoral riggings and illegal assets of Nawaz Sharif abroad

To summarize, it took Imran Khan 22 years to become Prime Minister because Pakistan’s political system is deeply flawed.

The lesson here is that if you ever want to become the PM of Pakistan then you would have to be a well-known national personality so you can build a political party that would gravitate around you. Next, you’ll need an unlimited supply of money and patience to sustain that party for an indefinite period of time. You should be operating near the national capital so you can relentlessly pressure the government that you seek to replace.

It would also help if elections coincided with the incumbent government’s downfall due to an extraordinary scandal like ‘Panama gate’.

Realistically the chances that anyone’s stars will ever align like that are faint. Shakespeare once wrote, “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” An enormous amount needs to be done to develop our democratic institutions, and amend certain weaknesses in our electoral system, if we are to break this cyclical repetition of governments. Otherwise we will always only be voters and never ‘Kaptaans’.

The writer is an agriculturist with degrees in Economics and Mass Communication. He can be reached at skhanzada@ymail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 16^th 2018.