The political phenomenon dominating both the media and drawing room discussions is the Lahore jalsa of the party led by Imran Khan. Resonant with the uplifting warblings of Faisal Kapadia and Bilal Maqsood and the defiant baritone of Shehzad Roy, punctuated by canned music every time a speaker paused for a glass of water, this was a highly organised and very successful event.
Consider. Our former cricketing legend comprises almost the perfect ingredients for political success. He is handsome, having added a layer of age-given distinction to his good looks. He is wealthy, but with no smear whatsoever in the manner of his acquisition of wealth. He is articulate and forthcoming about his views, with an appealing air of candour. And, thanks to his highly successful sports career and outstanding philanthropic endeavours, his is one of the best known names in the country. He is a folk icon in a land pitiably short of heroes.
If someone were looking for a person who could make a perfect political figure, they clearly would have had to look no further than Mr Khan. Rana Sanaullah and Siddiqul Farooq may carp how they wish. The PTI jalsa demonstrated that Imran Khan is clearly the man of the moment. What he, or we, should make of this moment is what we need to reflect on.
Four sets of questions come to the mind of this commentator: those relating to the timing, the venue, the audience and the message.
First, the timing. Mr Khan’s Lahore triumph has been quite a long time coming. It took the PPP, established in November 1967, only over three years to sweep the polls in what is now Pakistan. The MQM was founded in 1984, and had made a powerful electoral showing as early as 1988. By contrast, it has taken the PTI as much as 15 years to come to this point. And they are still far away from any election victories! No, dear reader, their pace of movement has been sclerotic. Where, then, did this sudden surge of vitality come from? Those sympathetic to the PML-N suggest that the anti-establishment postures recently adopted by Mian Nawaz Sharif have troubled the powers-that-be sufficiently to cause them to unleash the asset they have been nurturing all these years. Alternatively, could this be an idea whose time has finally come?
The choice of venue, Lahore, would seem to strengthen the first hypothesis. But let us also appreciate the unique status of that city, irrespective of who rules there. Lahore is an almost automatic choice for anyone seeking to initiate a political programme or make a quantum leap therein — from the Quaid himself in 1940 to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1967 and 1974 to Benazir Bhutto in 1986. If Mr Khan is serious about his political plans, then Lahore was the obvious choice for a grand kickoff.
Does a strong showing in a Lahore jalsa automatically lead to electoral success? Mian Nawaz Sharif’s cohorts may draw comfort from history in that, back in 1986, the several times larger crowds drawn by Benazir Bhutto in 1986 failed to lead to an electoral victory in Punjab in the 1988 elections.
Thirdly, there is the issue of the audience. According to many pundits, the audience represented the youth of the nation, the ‘Facebook Generation’, which is about to mount a revolution in this country. Oh, please! The scattering of young people one observed appeared to be those whom the awam (general public) calls “burgers” — the pampered progeny of the elite, scarcely representative of our toiling masses and downtrodden poor. You will find the real youth of this nation at MQM jalsas or at those of the Tablighi Jamaat. Let’s face it. The story of Pakistan’s youth is a sad one. Educated (if at all) under the toxic post-Zia syllabi, brains stuffed with misinformation and jingoistic fantasies, unemployed for the most part and, quite often, largely unemployable, they may well be a ‘Lost Generation’. The mainstream political entities (in which classification the PTI must now also be included) are all perceived as parties of the super-privileged elderly, which have no nexus with the young. These angry, bitter and confused youngsters could soon start casting about for a new leader, one who speaks their harsh language.
To return to the jalsa, the bearded brigade was conspicuous by its lack of visibility. They did not need to be there, since Mr Khan was clearly espousing some of their core causes. It is established Islamist orthodoxy to hate the Americans — an orthodoxy that Mr Khan has happily embraced — just as yesterday’s orthodoxy demanded that we hate the Russians and hail the Americans as our benefactors. This was essentially a gathering of educated professionals. There, among the hopeful who came to hear the Great Khan speak, was a coming together of members of Pakistan’s middle-class elite and members of the bureaucratic-military establishment that actually runs things in Pakistan. If these groups have finally decided (after Mr Khan’s 15 years of giving interviews and appearing on TV talk shows) that now is the time to utilise this carefully nurtured asset, then the threat is not merely to the PML-N in Punjab. It should also be a warning to the PPP and others, who are teetering on the edge of irrelevance.
It must be understood that Mr Khan is a man of conscience, a crusader. Despite some of the gaffes he makes through lack of information (after all, politics and economics never were his field of expertise), there are real issues on which he has chosen to crusade, such as the issue of corruption. In this, he is not unlike Anna Hazare in neighbouring India. But the problem with crusaders like Hazare is that they are single-minded and regard any compromise as a deviation from the true path. However, politics is all about negotiated compromises and live-and-let-live accommodations — particularly in ethnically and geographically complex countries like India and Pakistan. Necessarily, such crusading figures serve only as grist for the mills of the hard right. Witness the fate of another sincere but naive political figure of yore, Air Marshal Asghar Khan, who also allied himself with religio-political parties in his 1977 crusade. The protest movement he energised with his February 1977 speech at Lahore led, however unintentionally, directly to the appalling dictatorship of Ziaul Haq.
The writer is a marketing consultant based in Karachi. He is also a poet