- Imran Khan’s slogan mongering
Prime Minister Imran Khan claims that the country under him has entered the final phase to build Pakistan on the principles of Riyasat-i-Madina. He defines this as “a society based on justice, compassion and the dignity of our human beings.”
Riyasat-e-Madina requires extraordinarily high moral standards that no Pakistani leader, least of all Imran Khan, can ever hope to attain. Hazrat Umar, the second Caliph, would not let a dog go hungry fearing that he would have to answer for it before Allah. Has Imran ever cared to enquire how many people have committed suicide on account of poverty or killed their children because they could not feed them? Has he ever cared to investigate the exact number of those who became jobless as a result of retrenchments as the economy faltered under the PTI rule? Has he counted the people made homeless or who lost businesses or were deprived of jobs during the period as a result of the anti-encroachment drive launched without alternate plans for their relocation? And the number of those sliding down into despair land called euphemistically “below poverty line”?
Are we anywhere near the ideals being enunciated by Khan?
While the Prime Minister extols human dignity and compassion, media reports continue to appear every other day about degrading crimes against women. A husband cuts a wife’s tongue, another shaves her head, still another one snatches away her suckling child and confines her to a room in handcuffs and chains; someone forces his wife to drink acid or burns her alive for failing to bring sufficient dowry. Can Pakistan under Imran Khan be called a society based on human dignity? Azam Swati, who misused his official authority to persecute a poor family and get the IGP Islamabad transferred, and was subsequently ordered by the former CJP to resign, has been brought back to the cabinet. That much about a society based on justice.
It could be sacrilegious for some to compare Pakistan to the state of Madina. Many would be happy if Mr Khan could undertake the easier task of turning the country into Jinnah’s Pakistan with a federal, parliamentary system and a pluralistic and modern welfare state.
