Someone whom I have always admired unabashedly, Khan Roedad Khan, after his long years in the bureaucracy is now one of Pakistan’s leading armchair samurais, not only advocate of change but proponent of revolution. Loudly welcoming Musharraf’s coup – so many bleeding-heart liberals did that – he said that the man and the moment had come together.
Now, emerging from something akin to hibernation, he is saying the same about Imran Khan: “...the hour has found the man...” and so on. Enemies one knows how to deal with. Admirers present a more complicated problem.
Some other keen-eyed observers of the national scene given to filling newspaper space, let them remain nameless, who also saw great possibilities in Musharraf are now rooting for Imran. At times such as these one is tempted to duck for cover.
Only in a matter of days after the Minto Park jalsa, Imran’s bandwagon is gathering speed and strength, whipping up the enthusiasm of those whose life’s mission is not to miss the moment, no matter what the moment may be.
No country boasts a higher proportion of nation-saviours than Pakistan. Anyone one meets is either crying for the nation or is desperate to save it. Jumping over all impediments such patriots are clambering aboard the glittering wagon, determined not to let the opportunity pass. A grandson of our Bard – Iqbal, who else? – has joined the Tehreek-e-Insaf. Others in growing numbers are threatening to do so.
The one charge brought against Imran was that he lacked constituency hopefuls. The sands were shifting but the traditional political class, always cautious and hyper-prudent, was not seeing this. It took a spectacular piece of political theatre for such eyes to open. No wonder what was formerly a trickle is turning into a flood, more and more would-be election material turning up at Imran’s door. Soon they will be knocking it down. Going by this trend, his problem is likely to be less a poverty of choices than an embarrassment of riches, too many contenders vying for the PTI ticket.
We have Imran’s word for it that Jahangir Tareen and his crowd (reportedly in the process of forming another political party...by the looks of it another damp squib) are negotiating terms of endearment with him. Hmm. If this crowd is anyone’s idea of change the entire concept of change has to be redefined. An over-crowded bandwagon, the passengers out with their elbows and pushing each other, can leave people guessing about its destination.
All this has happened suddenly, indeed much too quickly, yesterday’s paladins, pictures of gravity, titans of politics, promising big things, preaching change and revolution, looking forlorn and lost, put to the necessity of groping for relevance and meaning.
The PPP is sitting pretty, relatively pretty, not overly worried by the Imran phenomenon. There is something to be said for shattered, bottom-of-the-barrel credibility. From that blessed state things can only improve, they can’t get worse. As the party pitching for change, and promising utopia, it is the PML-N feeling the heat more, still not clear in its mind how to respond to the Imran challenge.
The Greeks took Troy through subterfuge, by way of the wooden horse. Imran has taken Lahore by assault and the previous claimants of Lahore’s throne are still recovering from the shock.
The PML-N’s greatest strength, the only thing going for it, was its counterpoint status to the PPP. It stood as the alternative to the existing order symbolised by President Zardari and his knights of the round table (some Camelot this). That place about to be usurped, if not already taken, by Imran, it must rediscover relevance for itself. Anyone can be a political player but it takes something different, some poetry and magic, to become a winner.
We are headed for interesting times, 2013 promising to be a climactic year. So many things will be packing up: My Lord the Chief Justice’s term coming to an end, the president’s term ending, Gen Kayani’s time up, if all goes well elections taking place against the backdrop of a veritable clamour for change. With a growing number of Pakistanis fed up of the old faces, it is difficult for the old politics to remain the same.
As the spirit of 1970 is recreated the bandwagon effect will become stronger. Elbows will become sharper and the tides of enthusiasm will ebb. There is no greater spur to cynicism than the sight of men driven by desperate ambition, afraid that if they do not strive hard enough something irretrievable will be lost.
I remember the mad rush around Benazir Bhutto after her triumphant homecoming in April 1986. What a crowd of job-seekers and potential ticket-holders – myself included, I have to confess – followed her cavalcade. (In extenuation I have to say that I soon got tired of the exercise. I told Salmaan Taseer once that I didn’t mind running and pushing but was not up to it everyday.)
The same rush was to be seen when Nawaz Sharif was the great hope of the nation. Now the same thing is happening with Imran Khan. With him it has taken a long time in coming but come it finally has, and the elbow brigade is out in full strength.
Horace Walpole said that he would love England but for the people in it. Often I find myself wondering that it would be so much easier to take to politics but for the people in it. This is one of my favourite bits in O’Neill’s ‘The Iceman Cometh’: “You asked why I quit the Movement. I had a lot of good reasons. One was myself, and another was my comrades, and the last was the breed of swine called men in general.”
I was just reading something in the New York Review of Books about the Arab counter-revolution: those who launched the Arab awakening, the youthful protesters, will not be the ones determining its outcome. Forces better organised – whether the military or the Islamist parties – will take over that role. This is the fate of all popular movements, the barricades manned by the young and the enthusiastic, but the movements eventually taken over by other elements.
The same thing at a certain level is happening with Imran Khan. His foot-soldiers, the young and the not-so young, those who talk the most insistently and eloquently about change and how they are fed up of the old faces, the legions who streamed into Minto Park and wrote a new political message across the Pakistani skyline, are a world apart from the worldly-wise ticket hopefuls knocking at Imran Khan’s door.
Reality dictates its own compromises. Still, it must never be forgotten that if there be an Imran Khan phenomenon it has been powered by the young. To keep this enthusiasm alive will remain one of his foremost tasks.
Who says Imran is not politically savvy? He is saying not a word about the army or the security establishment. He is not touching the MQM. He is concentrating on consolidating his position in Punjab, which means focusing his attack on the PML-N. From his point of view this makes eminent sense. He succeeds if his PTI comes to be recognised as the alternative in the wings, the replacement of the Zardari order, which is only possible if the PML-N is cut down to size.
Talk of change is easy. Bringing it about is different. Corruption has become shorthand, a metaphor, for what ails Pakistan. But the country’s problems require a better attempt at definition. Ours is an over-extended state, spreading its feet more than the available cloth allows. We look at the world through paranoid glasses, India, Afghanistan, the imperatives of national security, an over-emphasis on ideology, distorting our thinking.
To get these things right, to bring about a change in the fundamental tenets of our national belief, requires not confrontation but mature engagement with the security establishment. Only in partnership can a new thinking be evolved. Only a man secure in himself can engage thus with the keepers of the national flame. Who can this person be? We have to make our pick from the choices available.
It is going to be a momentous twelve months. Let’s hope this period is not the precursor to another false dawn.
