The mighty could also fall

Getting past a ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ should be the strategy for Imran Khan

Did PTI’s protest in Faisalabad and government’s response to it produce the desired outcomes? The answer in plain words will be ‘no’. Then the logical follow up question would be: Why should political parties engage in activities that not only create anarchic conditions but also lead to loss of precious human life? Who should be held responsible for Haq Nawaz’s death? The blame game will continue yet Haq Nawaz will not come back to life. Let us stop blame game and mourn the loss of this precious life.

Over the past nearly four months now we have been watching the emergence of turmoil and political chaos in the country. We have reached this stage for mainly two reasons: inaction on part of the government to effectively deal with a breakdown of law and the hubris on part of the protesting party leader. The combination of this inaction on the one hand and arrogance on the other has brought us to the point where we are today.

How did the government come to this pass? There could be multifarious reasons with the main reason being the PM’s leadership style of slow decision making and relying on the advice of those who had their own political agenda to pursue. In a crisis while it is desirable to engage multi-stakeholders to avert the negative consequences of a crisis, in the final analysis, however, it had to be the leadership of the PM which was expected to make a quick final judgment call to find a solution to the emerging crisis.

JI leadership, a coalition partner with PTI in KP, was a poor choice to be given the key initiative in negotiating a resolution with the PTI. The PM should have himself directly engaged with IK to set the agenda for coming to an amicable solution to the conflict. Only after this the task of finalizing the details could have been assigned to a committee of the Cabinet. In any effective negotiations the terms of settlement of a conflict must be discussed and decided between the top leadership of disputants before handing it to a lower level committee.

What had been IK’s folly in exacerbating the present situation? IK who continues to display hubris is himself to blame if there is no solution in sight to the crisis. Over the last four months he has increasingly exposed his inconsistency and flawed logic to find a pragmatic solution to his political demand(s). First, he denied presenting his case in a legal institutional framework. He wanted to have the solution presented to him in a silver platter on the container. He should have realised that this will not happen.

Second, IK’s promised revolution had already been derailed. Why is it so? Instead of building a team fired up with a revolutionary zeal, he has himself become instrumental in promoting the ‘lota’ culture. Those who bring revolution and reconstruct the old reality make sure that they have the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people on the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. They always think first ‘who’ and then ‘what’.Their negotiating strategy is based on the principle ‘how to get past ‘no’.

Like human life stages of birth, childhood, adulthood, middle age, old age and then death, the fall and climb of leaders also goes through a stage cycle. The leadership fall or climb at stage one can kick in when leaders become arrogant, taking their short term success as entitlement for wielding more entitlements. At stage two, their demands become irrational and they start blaming everything and indulge in invectives to vent their frustration if additional entitlements don’t come their way. Once this happens the decline of the leader will very likely follow. Luck and chance also plays some role in the success of a leader and those who fail to acknowledge this overestimate their own capabilities and hasten their failure.

At stage three, a leader begins to suffer from undisciplined pursuit of yet more additional demands. This is what typifies IK’s current psychology. Denial of ground reality and to continue to push for an agenda which is overly ambitious can stall negotiations without which there can be no resolution. Finally, at stage three the frustrated leader can get onto a path of destruction the consequences of which can lead to irreparable loss. The death of Haq Nawaz must be seen in the backdrop of this.

The government and IK ought to realise that the present chaos and anarchy can be fatal for the development of the country. Today more than ever before we need to unite rather than divide. This unity is required by putting aside personal ambitions. We need to unite to sustain economic growth to feed our poor, we need to unite to put out-of-school children in schools, we need to unite to make our health system work so that the sick can get treated, we need to unite so that we can fight extremism, we need to unite so that we can fight all kind of injustice in the society, and above all we need to unite so that we can protect the vulnerable.

A final word for our political leaders: Do remember that those leaders who believe themselves as saviours are in a hurry to achieve their objectives, advocate revolution without personal sacrifices and create an initial hype may achieve initial upswing but ought to remember that this upswing might be transitory. They should be flexible and adaptive while negotiating to resolve a conflict. Getting past a ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ should be the strategy at the present stage of negotiations since this is the only way to reach an amicable solution to the present crisis.