He acknowledged that he failed for two reasons: One, the pandemic shut everything down, including Pakistan’s closest ally, China. Second, General Bajwa, who was the army chief at the time, would not let him do what he wanted to do.
After rambling for an hour and a half, in which he mostly railed against the establishment, Imran announced his agenda. He read it point by point from a piece of paper, looking down and looking up, and taking off and putting on his glasses. The confidence he had displayed in prior speeches was gone. He was hiding inside a large container, on whose exterior was posted a verse from the scripture.
The agenda looked like a laundry list. Attract foreign investment, boost exports, boost tourism, extract minerals, grow small and medium sized industries, boost agricultural production, expand the tax base from 2.5 million to 40 million, stop money laundering, make health care affordable for everyone, give income subsidies to the poor, encourage humane treatment of domestic servants, stop borrowing from the IMF and countries such as Saudi Arabia, and get overseas Pakistanis, especially in the US, to invest in Pakistan’s economy, not just send remittances to their relatives.
Despite the length of the speech, he neglected to mention a major barrier that stands in the way of accomplishing his utopian agenda – Pakistan’s underground economy, which according to investment analyst Ruchir Sharma is greater than 30% of the known economy. Other analysts say it may be as large as 50%.
Al Jazeera interviewed him after the speech and asked what he would do differently if he’s re-elected. He said he would impose the rule of law, which he said he had discovered when he lived in Britain. He added, “Denmark is number one out of 140 countries in the rule of law index. Pakistan is ranked 129. Denmark’s per capita income is $68,600 whereas Pakistan’s is $1,600.”
Asked to comment on foreign policy, he took the previous army chief, General Bajwa to task and said: “He condemned Russia [over the war in Ukraine] when we shouldn’t have and should have stayed neutral.”
He acknowledged that he failed for two reasons: One, the pandemic shut everything down, including Pakistan’s closest ally, China. Second, General Bajwa, who was the army chief at the time, would not let him do what he wanted to do.
After his ouster a year ago, he had harshly criticized General Bajwa for staying neutral in domestic politics, i.e., not siding with him. It’s worth noting that Imran Khan squarely wants to place Pakistan in the China bloc, contradicting his own advice for staying neutral in foreign affairs.
Also after the rally, TIME published a long interview of Imran Khan by Charlie Campbell. He had interviewed Imran Khan five years ago. The interview was not flattering, despite the fact that the magazine put him on the cover. It generated a lot of adverse commentary on Twitter from the PTI leader’s acolytes who cannot stand a balanced assessment.
The portrait that emerged from the interview was that of a self-centered man, always patting himself on the back, naïve to the ground realities of the country, and a man who repeats every platitude in the lexicon of politics.
Campbell noticed that during the Zoom interview, Imran sat with prayer beads “wrapped nonchalantly around his left wrist,” and repeated yet again that the US was involved in his ouster. Campbell noted, “the actual intrigue was purely Pakistani.”
Campbell also noted that Khan does not have much sympathy in the West since he’s been on an anti-American bluster for years and has often sided with the Taliban. The West knows that he is a double-faced man who was visiting Putin in Moscow when Russia invaded Ukraine and a man who ignores China’s mistreatment of its Muslim Uighur population while lambasting the West for its Islamophobia.
He is the man who wants to have it both ways. It’s always the other party that’s wrong. He is infallible. The mystery is that millions adore him and would do anything to have him back in the office. The analogy between him and Donald Trump is hard to ignore.
Leading the opposition is a much easier task than being in government. It’s no secret that Khan failed to deliver in the three and a half years when he was prime minister. Instead of creating domestic harmony and healing the wounds of the past, which any genuine leader would try to do, he injected more divisiveness in politics.
Campbell notes, “Khan’s fleeting political success was owed to a Faustian pact with the nation’s military and extremist groups that shepherded his election victory and he is now reaping the whirlwind.” He goes on to say, “If Pakistan’s economic woes are reading a new nadir, the trajectory was established during Khan’s term. A revolving door of Finance Ministers was compounded by bowing to hardliners.” Khan, who had promised not to go around the world with a begging bowl, “struck a deal with the IMF to cut social and development spending while raising taxes in exchange for a $6 billion loan.”
In the interview, Imran said if and when he returns to power, he will put the country back on the rails by creating a “completely new social contract” that will enshrine power to the political institutions. Is it even possible to create a welfare state that combines the virtues of the first Islamic state with the best of Scandinavian democracy and the best of Chinese economics?
Can Imran Khan of all people be trusted to create it when he had his chance and failed to do it. When asked why he failed, he said he did not know how much influence the army chief had in running the country. He said Gen. Bajwa was not interested in eliminating corruption in the country. How could he not know? All that Khan could say was that he was helpless.
He is the man who wants to have it both ways. It’s always the other party that’s wrong. He is infallible. The mystery is that millions adore him and would do anything to have him back in the office. The analogy between him and Donald Trump is hard to ignore.