Daily Times

If you want to burst into laughter, turn on your television sets and watch Imran Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), addressing a group of reporters. He sounds serious, I know, but it is not the tone that cracks you up, it is the content. Listen to him saying: “I will end corruption in 19 days,” followed by, “35 punctures” and then “I am not going from the container without the resignation of the prime minister.” Now tell me, how can you resist giggling?

An intelligent person would know how to avoid media attention once he is caught red handed like this but not the former model of BB Tips. He does not stop and keeps on amusing us with his exaggerated threats and false accusations almost everyday as if he is a histrionic teenager holding a bottle of pills in one hand and brandishing a knife in the other, unsure of which one will increase his popularity more. Now convert this knife in your mind with a mike and the picture will be complete.

Following the same pattern, this time he has challenged members of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Through a press conference on television the former captain insists that all the members of the ECP should resign from their posts immediately. If they do not, then first it means that they are guilty as charged. Second, it means that Khan’s information is trustworthy for which he must continue his ‘struggle’. On top of all this, it also means that now they should get ready to face an indefinite dharna (sit-in) in front of their head office in Islamabad.

In Response to Khan’s ultimatum, the reasonable chief election commissioner of Pakistan, Sardar Ahmed Raza, tried to deal with the situation logically. He declared that members of the ECP would not resign. And if a particular political party had evidence against any of them, it should in that scenario pursuit the case legally by sending a reference to the judicial commission. Once the political party won the dispute in a court of law, then the shamed members would have no other choice except to step down.

I agree with the former justice of the Supreme Court (SC) and do not believe that we can afford to promote the culture of blackmailing anymore. We have been subdued in the past by a number of powerful people (uniformed or otherwise) who assailed constitutional institutions to seize power. Now it is time to put a stop to that practice. Having said that, I cannot support any wrong doings of the members of the ECP either. I believe the matter should be handled in strict accordance with the law, nothing more nothing less. If the PTI is confident and possesses any evidence, then it must not back off from its position and file a case against them, hire the best constitutional lawyers and fight it to the end. The question that perplexes me though is if the incredulous political party has any proof at hand or not.

History tells us that most likely it does not; if it held any reproducible material then a reference would have been submitted a long time ago, its loud clamour sweeping the talk shows. What they might have is hearsay. He heard this from who told him, who forwarded it to a friend, who updated them, the PTI. Through this sequence, meaningless gossip transforms itself into gospel truth, especially if it lands upon the gullible ears of the chairman who, chances are, would get so wound up after listening to the story that in 15 minutes would call in a press conference and start issuing his long list of accusations.

He behaved the same way in 2014. Beating the drums of election fraud as loud as he could, he moved towards the capital and sat on the streets for four months. The bottom line though was not the rigging, as he proclaimed. It was his inability to accept his loss. Carried away with his neck injury that he suffered a couple of days before the elections, and a humiliating defeat, he conjured up the whole conspiracy theory in which thousands of people followed a secret agenda to help the PML-N steal the elections from him! It may sound unbelievable to you but so hostile and vengeful was he that he did not even flinch when his party, in collaboration with the dubious Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), attacked Pakistan Television (PTV) and the National Assembly. The plan was to create enough chaos where the army would force Mian Nawaz Sharif to resign and somehow hand over power to Imran Khan. That plan failed but he continued to spill venom from the container top. It was only after the Peshawar massacre that he called off the sit-in.

I am not sure what he is scheming about this year but, whatever it is, we all know it is not good for the country and its democratic institutions. The reason I say this is not because I think he is inherently malicious; I insist on this because I believe he is in a rush to seize power. He knows the country is finally back on the right track and economic indicators favour a growth spurt. True, it may not be due to the measures taken by the federal government and most likely due to the intervention of the army to quell terrorism, Chinese investment to build the economic corridor and a drop in international fuel prices. However, one thing is certain: the person who, irrespective of whether he is responsible for this economic growth or not, is going to bag the benefits in the next election will only be Nawaz Sharif provided he finishes his tenure. Tell me: if you were you were as old as Imran Khan is, would you wait for the next elections and risk losing another five years? Would you not attack the ECP?

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com