Imran Khan has become a confusion for me. For an educated, self-aware person in his 20s, he’s sometimes too revolutionary … sometimes there are too many contradictions to his words. Which side to believe?
After getting some hate on a reddit post where ”how-I’d-dared” to oppose some of his policies, this article is an effort to see Imran Khan in a light which covers every development & destruction he’s caused till the time of his ascendancy to PMship and now his eventual overthrow.
In village from where I belong, my agemates call IK an anti-islamist traitor imposed on Pakistan by USA. Imran Khan is campaigning against the USA claiming to be ousted from power because it (USA) didn’t like his visit to Russia. Which of the two is right?
Meanwhile, the party I am a member of claims that IK is irrelevant as a revolutionary. He is a part of this “capitalist system”, born, raised and trained without being poor financially at any point of life so … he can’t correct things for those who are poor financially. Also that he comes without any group of ideological and sincere individuals with him. During my research for this article, some people described his party as “bits and parts borrowed from the very parties that he is now fighting” and himself as “a Manchurian candidate like all the rest of them albeit a new and improved one”.
The man is famous, no doubt. He’s been a leader-under-pressure, we can gather this from his cricket career. Recently having developed a “tiger force” constituting mainly youngsters (which some call his personal “fascist cult”), the man is ruling over the heads and hearts of most of the middle class citizens. This much is reality.
But is he a revolutionary leader? Is he a hypocrite or someone just courageous to go back on his decisions when confronted with new factual evidence? Is he really the “only” better solution we have? Is he not a revolutionary leader but can become so if given a second chance? Is he capable of bringing about the much needed economic development in Pakistan? Let’s see the answers.
The people capable of supporting/resisting Imran Khan are people having basic needs met. They do have jobs and some form of daily entertainment. His haters in this class explain how he has a child out of wedlock, apparently a girl who he does not own. Religious people (including supporters of JUI) argue that he was a playboy before coming to politics and so he will lead Pakistan to destruction. The same people also used to (some still do) criticize him as being a ‘qadiani/ahmadi’ before he clarified his belief in Muhammad SAW as the last prophet on TV. The same group argues that he believes in magic and has been directed to take special care of people whose name starts with a particular urdu letter (ع); and that this is the reason behind the continuation of Usman Buzdar on his post, despite country-wide opposition. Others state his marriages (3rd and counting:) as a referral to his ‘bad character’, credible enough to dismiss him from any respectable role. All these are quoted from his personal life (belief in magic/ too many wives/ illicit child). These personal reasons, rationally, should not be allowed to impact the answer of “How beneficial can IK be to all the citizens of Pakistan?”. (If you disagree with this metric of judgement (rationality), you can express so in the comments below)
Now let’s see his politics. To start off, kindly watch this embedded Youtube video of 1 minute by Khursheed Shah on the floor of the National Assembly. Click here to watch.
If your internet is not working for the video, let me explain. You can skip this part if you watched the video. It presents the statements of IK that he later went back on, including:
I won’t take loans
I won’t increase rates of Petrol/Gas/Electricity
I won’t make more metro-buses
I won’t let the dollar rate increase against our national currency (Rupee)
I won’t befriend India
I won’t give any tax-amnesty scheme
I won’t take any independent electable (to make/maintain my government)
I won’t take any security/protocol
I will turn Prime Minister house into a library and bulldoze the governor house (in public interest)
I won’t go to other countries
I will travel in commercial flights
I will travel on a cycle
I will form a small cabinet
I won’t give authority to anyone under investigation in court
I will open any constituency (for recounting votes)
I will never lie to you
Seems just like a list of promises that I would make before coming into power and that is why I think this guy had no idea of what it is to be a Prime Minister before he became one. He said on multiple occasions himself that “I wasn’t aware of the sheer amount and magnitude of problems that were in Pakistan, before I came into power”. When confronted about changing the top officials of institutions multiple times, he said he did these steps to bring “better” people as head of institutions (Prime Example: Punjab Police Chief was changed 7 times in 3 years in IK’s rule).
When we can agree that Imran Khan was in-fact unprepared to lead Pakistan when he was appointed as the Prime Minister, that leads to today’s main argument: Can someone be considered a leader if he is just 100% true to his will (for serving and revolutionizing the country?). The points made by Khursheed Shah are true, BECAUSE Imran Khan actually wanted to do all those things. He must have dreamt of going to his office on a cycle, I am ready to believe that but is this statement acceptable coming out of a revolutionary’s mouth? Or any other good-hearted but practically-impossible statements mentioned by Khursheed Shah? There … that gives away Imran’s stunt of being a good leader.
The uneducated poor-class might just need the powerful speech at the UN and not-standing-up for world leaders acceptable enough to declare him as a leader. For the urban-middle-class, a leader’s metric is economic, political and national stability. And these two classes remain interchangeable. Poor-class families often have middle-class relatives and vice-versa. This amalgamation serves as a proof to my next statement: the middle-class worker family does also want their poor relatives to do better. But they can’t help those relatives because .. well, a lac a month only serves one family for good, no more.
For the middle-class following of Imran Khan, increasing the GDP growth of the country is as important a metric of achieving the status of a “revolutionary-leader” as is to make and maintain an independent foreign policy (which embodies in itself the speech at UN, the visit to Russia and the Absolutely-Not movement). A Pakistani leader has to bear the external pressure and castrate/kill a few convicted rapists as well as make financial deals to liberate the country’s economy from feudal landlords and their seniors: the crony-capitalists. Here’s some other things that if Imran can do/gets done, he can be acclaimed a leader in history:
Push Army and other swollen institutions back in their boundaries
Stop taking any funding from anyone outside PTI and also set a reasonable max-donation cap on to protect any major-contributor from hijacking your party (like Jahangir Tareen and Aleem Khan business group did. Helicopter rides came at a price!)
Read, Listen, Watch or get information in any other form of the modern systems of economy, social-interactions among societies and modern technologies. IK really pretends to be all-aware by flashing 2-3 book names all around! Get down every night and read!
Do convert the PM house into a free-for-all library for national and international precedent.
Make new, planned cities (although he did try to make them but couldn’t because of point 2 … so solve it)
Protocol? One or two guard vehicles are justified in the scenario that above all points are prone to make him a tasty hit for crony-capitalists. No road closure or other measures are justified.
Stop lying. Immediately. We know the true statements and the “touches”.
To whoever reads this, some of the demands might sound stupid on the basis of credible information that you might have. I am open to listening and modifying these points. I can be contacted at Iamawaisalam@gmail.com.
All of the above points are possible by the political party that I am a member of. Having said that, Imran Khan can strategize all he could but I believe he will pay a toll for his mistake of coming into power unprepared for the first time. Now he can’t make the above changes.
The points above are written solely by myself and have no link whatsoever to the party. I can be wrong. You can take the survey (nav-bar) to know more about the party.
Credit should be given where it is due. If K. Shah and others like him stayed in power, I would probably not have known and enrolled in the party that I am now. In-fact, most of the younger generation, the “tigers of Imran Khan” or the “fascist cult”, this half-informed, half-emotional crowd wouldn't have educated itself had there been no Imran Khan. I study on Ehsaas Program or I would never have been able to write this critique and credit. So … the man holds goodwill, that’s what I believe. That’s why I will vote for him whenever the election happens, and I will be sad if he gets shot (Ref: Khummeini). With that being said, the lesson that I have gained from his experience is: You can’t do the right thing using the wrong method. It’ll backfire and the thing itself will remain undone.
The purpose of writing this article was to answer the question: How beneficial can IK be to the citizens of Pakistan, me and you? The answer: No revolutionary benefits should be expected because he is a member of the capitalist system itself. But he sure can still pave a way for future revolutionaries to eventually achieve political and economic stability in Pakistan.
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