And the day after
Imran khan and his PTI core team, who had strongly believed that May 2013 elections were stolen as a result of a grand conspiracy, have a lot of egg on their face. The three-member General Elections-2013 inquiry Commission headed by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Nasirul Mulk has given a clear and unequivocal verdict against a conspiracy to rob PTI of a thumping majority.
Much to the chagrin of the Khan, the commission has rejected PTI’s claims about organised rigging on all counts. A rather comprehensive 233-page verdict does not even leave even a shadow of doubt that claims about PTI lawyers furnishing ‘a room full of incriminating evidence’ was mostly hogwash.
PTI’s lawyer the octogenarian Abdul Hafiz Pirzada, nursing a serious heart ailment, is languishing in London. Perhaps he, at some stage, or the party’s point man for the judicial commission Ishaq Khakwani would soon shed some light on how the PTI leadership started believing its own rhetoric that they had an open and shut case. Imran Khan, maybe to keep the sagging morale of his followers high, was naively claiming ad nauseum that 2015 will be the year of general elections.
The party needs a lot of introspection to take stock of its present predicament and the tactics that have led it into a political cul-de-sac. Undoubtedly the Khan remains the biggest crowd puller and a charismatic political figure in Pakistan. But flip-flops and abrasive rhetoric is leading his party nowhere.
From the halcyon days of the 126-day ‘dharna’ to its present inertia the PTI needs to take a good look at its tactics and strategy. After the JC verdict it needs to move beyond ‘dhandli’ (rigging) allegations. It also needs to outgrow its sanctimonious approach that barring its leadership the rest of the political spectrum are thugs and criminals.
The PTI, simply by emerging as the third largest political party of the country and also by virtue of routing the PPP in the Punjab in the 2013 elections, is presently the only electoral alternative to the PML-N. But apart from raising empty slogans it has miserably failed to give alternate policy options.
The party needs a lot of introspection to take stock of its present predicament and the tactics that have led it into a political cul-de-sac
Khan’s ideological bent remains fuzzy. Of course the party espouses rightwing causes and betrays a soft corner for the Taliban.
Ironically, choosing Peshawar’s Army Public School as the venue – the site of the biggest massacre of children by the Taliban — the PTI chief recently pressed for opening talks with the TTP. The less said about his sense of political timing and acumen, the better.
Similarly, the PTI leadership rarely talks about foreign policy issues or the economy. At one time the Khan took a firm stance against drones, even threatening to block NATO supplies. Was this more in line with the liberals in the west protesting against use of drones on humanitarian grounds or for the love of the Taliban was never clear.
Similarly, Khan’s position on relations with India remains ambivalent to say the least. Is he a hawk or a dove on economic and trade relations with our belligerent neighbour? And what are his real views on Kashmir remains a mystery.
So far as KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) is concerned the PTI is running a relatively clean ship. But governance under Chief Minister Khattak has by and large remained lacklustre.
Thankfully, the JC has also delved in detail on the inadequacies and lapses of the Election Commission during the 2013 general elections. However, as the report points out, the lapses did not materially alter the end result.
This does not mean however that the process right from the top to the bottom should not be fixed. The prime minister in his rather conciliatory address to the nation, while officially announcing the verdict, thankfully desisted from the temptation of taking pot shots at the PTI.
His offer to reform the elections process, even going to the extent of going for a possible constitutional amendment, can form a good beginning for consensual politics to strengthen a flawed election process. The parliamentary committee for election reforms is the right forum in which the PTI from now on should be enthusiastically participating.
The Party has wasted more than two years on trying to dislodge the government through street power. Now the time has come to play its role as the leading opposition party in the parliament.
Its members in the National Assembly and the Senate have failed to do justice to the constituents that had elected them. For that matter Imran Khan should end his one-man boycott of the National Assembly and start leading the opposition’s putsch against the government in the parliament.
Imran Khan and his stalwarts have enough on their plate to worry about without jibes from the ruling party. For starters they have to contend with the wild allegations that were made against former CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry and former judge Khalil Ramday
Also by participating more actively in the process the PTI can outgrow the stigma of being a willing tool of the establishment. Imran’s remarks during the early days of the ‘dharna’, that the umpire was soon to lift his finger, remain etched in the public memory as an invitation for the military to sack the Sharif government.
The PML-N government, although inexorably damaged partly owing to its own blunders and somewhat also due to Imran’s dharna, is still very much around. However, the military’s footprint under General Raheel Sharif is much stronger and pronounced than ever before under a purely civilian dispensation.
In the end analysis, however, despite the daydreaming of the Bonapartists amongst the commentarati, the democratic system has been strengthened by the verdict of the judicial commission. The PTI chief, by accepting it, has also done the right thing.
Those in the party who largely through social media are alleging that the CJP was somehow compromised through ‘chamak’ (bribery and intimidation) are doing no service to their leadership. Similarly, after Prime Minister Sharif striking a positive note in his address, the PML-N ministers should also desist from the tendency of rubbing salt in PTI’s wounds.
Imran Khan and his stalwarts have enough on their plate to worry about without jibes from the ruling party. For starters they have to contend with the wild allegations that were made against former CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry and former judge Khalil Ramday. They intend to take Khan to the cleaners to clear their name.
So far as Mr Najam Sethi is concerned, he has asked for an apology from the PTI chief. Some kind of regret is in order for making an unsubstantiated claim of ‘35 punctures’ against the former caretaker chief minister.
Imran, after losing some political capital, perhaps should be considering tweaking his approach towards statecraft. Superficially it would seem that politics is just bluff and bluster. However, without a cerebral approach one can easily land into a blind alley — like the PTI has learnt, much to his peril.
