Imran Khan has made yet again another surprising shift in his stance, expressing a willingness to talk to the establishment if a representative is appointed. This change comes after his firm and consistent refusal to negotiate, stating he would rather stay in jail for nine more years, as late as in April 27, 2024. This recent change of heart is the most expected and realistic smack of reality to many who believed in his political rhetoric since his ouster in April 2022, and casted votes in his favor on February 8, believing in him as the savior of democracy and civilian supremacy in Pakistan.
Khan’s dual-sided claim that the establishment and the Americans were behind his ouster has been widely accepted. He is now popular enough to land him directly to the base camp of K2 without having to go through the tedious process of hiking to the base camp, and making multiple rotations in order to acclimatize.
The analogy of K2 might sound odd here, but the similarities between what it takes to get to the top echelons of Pakistan’s power corridors and summiting K2 are uncanny. Nerves, physical strength, reactions, and willpower-cum-adrenaline one gets by the mere idea of getting to the top are what keep many going despite all odds. Divided across four camps, surviving the bottleneck at the third camp is the real test on K2, a guarantee of death if you give up, but a certain winner if you make out of it in a small window available, 16 hours to be precise.
Khan’s populist support base serves as an abundant oxygen supply that has been a persistent confidence booster to a boisterous man; he remains the king of rhetoric and narratives. The one who question him land themselves a stinking mudslinging in a way that deserve another piece of writing.
Khan’s rhetoric is worrisome as it leads to “absolute control” which he has always wanted. To keep the narrative working, all he had to do was peddle more divisive mantras and keep an ‘us against them’ scenario alive. Hence, what started with an American conspiracy transformed on to “only animals are neutral’, “Dirty Harry”, “Baighairat” and the and most recent “spoiled kid”-like taggings, all of whom continued to be being hammered not only into the nation’s minds, but also made inroads into the entire national discourse.
The problem with his narrative of hate or for that matter any narrative is that it serves the short-term goals but once unleashed, it is impossible to reverse. Also, who is developing it? Are there any safety valves to control the damage it might cause? If no, why play with it? Also, what if the peddlers go rogue? This is exactly what has happened every time a project is launched by the establishment.
Khan has exploited all available time to his advantage provoking both the masses and the security apparatus. The support of the public on February 8 has further helped him ascend the power peaks, making May 9 like incidents inevitable. I wonder why nobody saw this coming? It all started with Zaman Park becoming the hub of the national and international news cycle. Multiple weekly interviews to foreign media with tear gas cartridges in front of him, long marches and protests where the scuffle between his followers and law enforcement agencies made visual headlines around the global and national media.
February 8, 2024 helped Khan land straight to camp two from camp one in one leap. From there onwards, he has tapped every possible option from inside jail. From garnering political support from the Pakistani diaspora abroad, a resolution in US Congress, UK parliament, European Union and IMF, posting videos on the 1971 debacle to directly playing blame games with the sitting Army Chief, he upped the ante to his best. But the quantum leap came from the least expected arena, the judiciary, straight to camp three within no time. But the situation is that of catch 22 now, he has surely made it to camp three, but has also approached the bottleneck. Remember that the bottleneck is in the death zone, where climbers either make it to the summit in 16 hours, or die, or give up and come back. Who knows, it may be this realization that is Khan’s cause for pleading for a representative from the establishment.
Political space, democracy, decency in discourse and coexistence in Pakistan are stuck at the bottleneck. Regardless of what happens next, good governance and rule of law remain a mirage. Pakistan has become a crossover between absolute control by a populist, or indirect military rule, a state of perpetual instability.