He had just flown in from London and was held up for two hours by the Homeland Security folks. He sat in the grand ballroom as his fans lined up to say “hello” to him, hardly making eye contact with anyone, let alone getting up to shake their hands. Perhaps he was suffering from jetlag? Or did he view himself as a Greek god?
He began his talk by saying he was lucky to be standing at the podium as the keynote speaker with 800 people in the room. Then he began to ramble about his life and mission. He said that “overseas Pakistanis” could make a real difference in helping him achieve his goals.
After he was done speaking, a question-and-answer session followed. No one wanted to ask the first question, so I did: “Will General Pervez Musharraf be in power after 2007.” He said, the general will do his best to stay in power. He said, that is the problem with dictators, they have no exit strategy and keep on inventing excuses for staying on; and that the general had destroyed all civilian institutions in the country.
I gathered things had gone sour between the two men. Of course, these days the relations have deteriorated to the point that their animus is being openly aired.
When asked how could Pakistan succeed, he said, by having an independent judiciary and an independent election commission. He commented on the major changes he had seen in India during his numerous visits there while playing cricket. He attributed it to the rise of a two-party system and an independent election commission.
During his tenure as prime minister, he was quite critical of Modi’s India. Now he is dismissed from power and has started praising India’s institutional arrangements and democratic setup.
Back then, Imran Khan said that in Pakistan the military has equated national security with the number of F-16s and nuclear weapons in its inventory. He talked at length about the poverty of people in Pakistani villages and how much more needed to be done to bring the country up to international standards.
When asked how could Pakistan succeed, he said, by having an independent judiciary and an independent election commission. He commented on the major changes he had seen in India during his numerous visits there while playing cricket. He attributed it to the rise of a two-party system and an independent election commission.
He was asked if he would like to become the next president. He said he would like to become a prime minister with executive powers, as envisaged in the constitution, and not like Shaukat Aziz, who has no powers and is a puppet of the khakis.
Of course, in August 2018 he did become the prime minister but to all intents and purposes, he was appointed to that position by the army, and had to keep saying that he was on the same page as the army.
Again while addressing Pakistanis settled in and around Silicon Valley in US, Imran Khan cited a World Bank study that found corruption was widespread in Pakistan and it was no surprise that there was no justice for the poor and under-privileged in Pakistan.
When asked who was his role model in Pakistani politics, he named Mohammed Ali Jinnah. This was clearly meant to raise his stature above all of the other leaders who had governed the country, including Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who was the Quaid’s lieutenant.
Imran Khan got three questions about cricket, which he did not answer, saying he was jetlagged.
After his talk, as he came off the stage, he was mobbed. Everyone wanted to have his or her picture taken with him. Some simply wanted to shake his hand. Others were content to make momentary eye contact with him.
I was troubled by what I had heard that evening. Imran Khan came across as a naïve observer of the political scene, not a man with even the most basic political acumen. For example, he said that all problems of Pakistan were caused by the country being divided into the “haves” and the “have nots”.
Which country does not have these two groups? His reference to the French Revolution was a stretch. Pakistan was not going to have a revolution like the French Revolution, which by the way did not result in the elimination of a gap in income equalities. It ushered in a French empire headed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
Imran Khan’s assertion that the country’s elite were the cause of multiple problems facing Pakistan did not square with the fact that every country has elites, not just the ones that fail. Successful governance of any country requires not the elimination of the elite, but their co-option.
Imran Khan is now comparing himself to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto was a gifted writer and speaker with a long pedigree in international and domestic politics. All Imran Khan has in common with Bhutto is a talent for staging mass rallies. But even there, Imran is no match for Bhutto.
How could Imran Khan aspire to become the next prime minister? The best case would be for his party to join a coalition government with a token ministerial position assigned to him.
His naivete further stood out in an interview that he gave to The Times in February 2018. When he took the oath of office six months later, as the head of a coalition, he made grandiose promises that I wrote would be impossible to fulfill.
In October 2019, it was his narcissism that stood out in an article in the Vanity Fair, which included his deeply offensive statement that Benazir Bhutto had brought death upon herself.
Three years into his term, he had failed to deliver on any of his promises. It was no surprise that eight months later, on April 10, his coalition fell apart and he lost his premiership. The former sportsman, The Times noted in a Leader, had mismanaged Pakistan’s constitutional and political crises. His departure was not big news in much of the world. The New York Times put it on page 17.
Questioning the legitimacy of his ouster, Imran Khan has begun spinning tales of conspiracies, which he claims were hatched to first oust him from office and then to kill him. At one rally after another, he is harping on these conspiracy theories and citing betrayals that allowed the British to colonise India. His prosecution complex has metastasized into a martyr complex.
He is now comparing himself to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto was a gifted writer and speaker with a long pedigree in international and domestic politics. All Imran Khan has in common with Bhutto is a talent for staging mass rallies. But even there, Imran is no match for Bhutto. I say that as someone who witnessed Bhutto’s spellbinding oratory twice at Karachi’s Nishtar Park in the early 1970s.