Sushant Sareen
For someone whose understanding of politics is limited to drawing banal cricketing analogies, the phrase ‘it’s
not cricket’ aptly describes the sort of politics Imran Khan is indulging in these days. His threat of leading a ‘Long March’ (how Mao must be twisting in his grave
over the Pakistani mutilation of the original Long March) to Islamabad to shake up the political system – he is himself isn’t clear on what he actually wants – is not cricket because it brazenly violates the basic rules
of the political game set in the constitution. It is also not cricket in the sense that a five year term in government is not the same as a five-day test match in which the two contending sides get to play two innings
each.
That Khan isn’t clear on what he hopes to get out of
the ‘Long March’ (or is it Tsunami March or Azadi
March?) is evident because he keeps shifting the
goalposts depending on what catches his fancy at a
particular time. He started with demanding a vote
verification in four constituencies, went on to demand a
mid-term election, retracted to demanding an audit of
the entire election (inspired by Afghanistan). The end-
game – how he hopes to get his demand met, what he
will do if the government continues to stonewall, and
what the consequences of any widespread disturbance
in Islamabad could be, including the outside chance of a
derailment of the democratic process – has obviously
not been thought through by him. Not only is his timing
wrong (barely a year after the general election he is
demanding a mid-term poll), he has also not factored in
the possibility that even if he managed to grab power,
he would then be faced with similar efforts to overthrow
him. In other words, it will be back to the sordid politics
of the 1990s.
Imran Khan suddenly became hyperactive against the
government after the military establishment seemed to
get into a tussle with incumbent Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif’s government leading many analysts to suspect
that he had been put up to the task by the powers that
be. Despite being seen as riding on the back of the
military to queer the pitch for the Nawaz Sharif
government, Imran Khan was careful to keep parroting
his commitment to democracy, even though he is doing
everything to undermine it. Even if he can’t force the
Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PMLN) out of office
through his agitation, he would have weakened the
civilian dispensation to a point where it would be forced
to lean on the crutches of the military, or at least
remain extremely diffident, before the military. That the
PMLN government has come to such a pass with just
about a year in office is a sorry statement on the
fragility of the democratic process in Pakistan.
It is not just Imran Khan who is on the march against
the government. The somewhat comical cleric from
Canada, Tahirul Qadri, has also been on the warpath,
selling an instant revolution to his acolytes as if it were
some kind of instant coffee. Politically, Qadri is a non-
entity. But like many other God-men, and such like in
the subcontinent, Qadri has his following which probably
runs into a million or more. His game is even less
nuanced than Khan’s because he makes no bones about
completely overthrowing the system. Ironically, he calls
his ‘revolution’ legal and constitutional! Qadri has been
given a leg up by the horribly botched strong-arm used
by the PMLN government against Qadri’s Lahore
headquarters, killing around a dozen people and injuring
some 100 in police firing.
Individually, however, neither Qadri nor Khan can oust
the government. Hence, efforts by quintessential
establishment flunkies and Tonga politicians (whose
support base can fit on a horse-driven Tonga) like the
Chaudaries of Gujarat and Sheikh Rasheed of
Rawalpindi to bring them together. But this appears to
be an uphill task because while Khan has some kind of
a stake in the system, Qadri is a misguided missile
seeking to destroy everything without any clear idea of
how and what to replace it with. What is more, they
have their problems on who will lead and their
suspicions on who will retreat first leaving the other in
the lurch. Meanwhile, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)
which was fast becoming irrelevant and leaderless, with Asif Zardari in his bunker, Bilawal active only on twitter
and the party is disarray, disunited (especially in Punjab) and directionless, has also started making noises against the government and in support of Khan.
But even if the PPP joined the opposition ranks, unless the army casts its lot with the forces arraigned against the government, it is unlikely that Sharif would lose power anytime soon.
Despite its problems with the government, the army
doesn’t seem quite ready to either force mid-term
elections, or usher in a medium-term interim
government of technocrats, or even take over power
directly. Even the praetorian Pakistan army knows that
doing any such thing would tantamount to jumping from
the frying pan into the fire. It would rather put up with
a weak government that subordinates itself to the
military than tempt fate or worse by destabilising the
government or ousting it. Of course, if massive
disturbances break out as a result of the agitations
being planned by Khan, Qadri and Co. then all bets are
off. If things come to such a pass, then Imran Khan will
have to cool his heels in the pavilion, his dreams and delusions of leading Pakistan shattered.
The most remarkable thing in the unfolding political drama in Pakistan is the swiftness with which Nawaz Sharif has lost political capital and managed to box himself into a corner because of wrong political decisions. He could still recover lost ground, but that
will require political cunning, coolness and compromise, none of the things he is known for.
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