I am of the firm and considered the opinion that we should not let Imran Khan and his popularity among the common people of Pakistan go waste. Imran Khan should himself realise that the kind of grip his charismatic persona at present enjoys over Pakistani society should not be wasted in the services of useless, endless, non-serious, and idiotic squabbles. Gradually and imperceptibly the Pakistani state has been losing its legitimacy in the eyes of the Pakistani public in the post-Zia period. Firstly, it has almost lost its ability to deliver services to the people. Secondly, its coercive apparatus has been carrying out discriminating and selective prosecution of popular leaders over the last four decades. This resulted in public mistrust and loss of confidence in the state apparatus. We see public manifestations of this lack of confidence and mistrust in our public life in day-to-day affairs of our social and political life.
So, conspiracy theories abound on everything that has something to do with the state. Imran Khan’s popularity, its massive scale, and its spread into every nook and corner of different regions of Pakistan could prove to be a valuable asset—if utilised properly—in stabilising Pakistani society and in linking the Pakistani state with the society it is presiding over. What we are witnessing in the form of Imran Khan's operations is something that strikes at the roots of the Pakistani state’s legitimacy. Pakistani public opinion is extremely malleable, and it is quite realistic on the part of state machinery to think in terms of erasing Imran Khan’s charisma from the minds of Pakistani people. However, in this way, they will ruin any prospects of stabilising Pakistani society and in the process, they will lose any chance of restoring state legitimacy in the eyes of the public. We have examples in our history where the state apparatus succeeded in erasing the charisma of popular leaders from the minds of the public. But following this, a process of fragmentation of public opinion set in, and society started to get divided into parochial, sectarian, ethnic, and caste-based groups. Following elder Bhutto’s hanging, Punjab turned towards sectarian rivalries and caste and baradaris became the main currency in politics.
Imran Khan’s popularity is modern as it is not based on any parochial, sectarian, or narrow ideological identities. Imran Khan’s popularity—the reports strongly suggest—has truly transcended ethnic boundaries. These ethnic boundaries have prevented the emergence of national leaders since Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto who were equally popular in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, and Balochistan. Imran Khan is truly a leader who has transcended these ethnic boundaries. I am keenly observing reports from all these regions, and this is my considered opinion that Imran Khan has a social base for his popularity in all these provinces. This is a moment in our history when a person like Imran Khan must make very painful sacrifices. He will have to forget all the pain that the state has unfairly inflicted on him. He will have to make compromises with his political opponents even if he does not like their faces and even if they are instrumental in making him suffer. This is the only way we can make this political system function.
Imran Khan should realise his historical role in restoring the link between people and the state. He should not fool the Pakistan public through false promises but by reforming the state by making it into a less exploitative structure and by making it deliver services
Imran Khan will have to rectify a historical mistake that all his predecessors made. They tried to transform their popularity into their patrimony. There are already signs that Imran Khan is foolishly repeating this historical mistake—that he considers that his popularity will make this country and its political system his family patrimony. Imran Khan is popular, but he is not Imam Khomeini. There are pockets of opposition, and they have the potential to regain their popularity in the most urbanised regions of the country. Even otherwise Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy and not a kingdom. You are popular, you are elected to serve the country for a fixed tenure, you serve during this tenure, and you go home. That is the way it should be. Imran Khan should realise his historical role in restoring the link between people and the state. He should not fool the Pakistan public through false promises but by reforming the state by making it into a less exploitative structure and by making it deliver services—a capacity which it has lost over the years.
The Pakistani state apparatus has an extraordinarily strong tendency of self-destruction. Getting Imran Khan's operations is one form of self-destruction. They built Imran Khan. Pakistani intelligence services played a crucial role in making Imran Khan the political leader he is today. Pakistan’s intra-elite conflict reached its zenith when after running get Nawaz Sharif operation for five years, the Pakistani state apparatus turned its guns towards Imran Khan. This was clearly the result of a change of guards at GHQ and Abpara. Imran Khan, meanwhile, assumed a high moral ground after he openly started confronting the state apparatus in the wake of his ouster from power through a no-confidence motion in the national assembly. Building a political leader and then destroying his popularity takes a lot of resources, energy, and time. The state apparatus should try to identify the real problem in this game while taking Imran Khan’s example as a test case. Imran Khan touched the present zenith of popularity after he fell out with the military establishment.
This means the Pakistan public has a negative image of Pakistan’s military establishment. Imran Khan never touched the zenith of his popularity while he was on the right side of the military establishment. The level of popularity Imran Khan enjoys at present is a requirement of the Pakistani state apparatus to stabilise society at social and political levels. Yet no one can reach this level of popularity without confronting the state apparatus and military establishment. How to solve this conundrum? The military establishment should show not only flexibility but a little sophistication as well. The military establishment should not come in the way of popular leaders at the first sign of disobedience. It should reach a broader understanding with popular political leaders and forces for the new rules of the game aimed at bringing stability to society.
It was shocking to witness ruling party ministers boast about their abilities after PTI protestors fled D-Chowk when the police allegedly resorted to brutal force to disperse the crowd in the last week of November
Both Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif are Punjab-centric political forces. These Punjab-centric leaders are in a kind of love-hate relationship with the military establishment. If the military establishment cannot establish working relations with these kinds of soft leaders, dealing with centrifugal forces on the periphery would be a real nightmare. The value of leaders like Imran Khan would become apparent if he is viewed from the perspective of larger security threats that Pakistan is facing at present. The social and political stability he could bring to the system is tremendous—only if he is less alienated from the system. It will be irrelevant in this situation whether he forms the next government, or he sits in the opposition. The military establishment should realise that he should have stakes in the system. Imran Khan on the other hand should realise that his popularity does not turn this country into his patrimony. He should behave like a political leader, not like a religious cult leader.
Why do we need political and social stability? Our political elite is under the sway of the idea that the political squabbles, intrigues, and power struggles that these entail are an end in themselves. By prevailing in these squabbles or by defeating an intrigue they achieve the greatest victory in politics. Nothing could be more preposterous. For instance, it was shocking to witness ruling party ministers boast about their abilities after PTI protestors fled D-Chowk when the police allegedly resorted to brutal force to disperse the crowd in the last week of November.
They never seemed to realise that this kind of political tension is devouring the country’s capacity to address the core issues faced by the nation. This is not the moment to be happy. This is a moment to ponder upon our future—a future that will bring questions of survival before us. We are facing the question of financial and economic viability; we are facing the question of ecological survival and environmental degradation; Our security paradigm needs reforms; terrorism, militancy, and centrifugal forces raising questions about our national integrity; social and economic inequalities are generating political and social unrest which our popular political forces are opportunistically trying to exploit for their petty political benefits; people are facing economic hardships and this in itself turning into an issue of social and political unrest. We do not have time, and we should immediately get down to work to address these challenges before it is too late. If we continue to remain mired in political squabble and power struggle, we will ruin everything.
Imran Khan's continued incarceration should not be the main topic of our national political discourse. That our political discourse revolves around this issue speaks volumes about the pathetically low standards of our political discourse. This does not mean Imran Khan should not be immediately released from prison so that he could play a part in the country’s politics. We should address the core issues that are confronting our society. We should come out of hysteria about keeping or releasing political leaders from prison. This hysteria results from the sadist mindset of someone sitting behind seven curtains and pulling the strings of the coercive machinery of the state to serve the institutional interests of one or the other subservient departments of the government or the state. We need political and social stability to address problems and issues that will put our survival at stake in the next ten years. Wasting time in the efforts to keep Imran Khan behind bars would be foolishness of the highest order.