Freeze, I am Ma Baker; Give me PTI

Regardless of what transpires in the end, the one person who is living and loving it is Bushra. She cannot keep herself off from the cameras and has shot many messages to the “followers of Islam.”

As I write these lines, Islamabad’s picture-perfect night’s serenity is rattled by distant ambulance sounds. Its crisp and bearably cold, environment is laden with anxiety about the next development on the political war front. Will Bushra-led, Gandapur-fed mobs rampage through Islamabad and the law enforcement rings melt away teargassing, belting, and shock-firing in their retreat? Will Imran snort pleasure from the fact that he has once again made the government and the Establishment besiege the capital of a nuclear state? Will he be doing a few additional push-ups to mark the adrenaline rush in his veins? Will the negotiations between the government and the PTI team turn the mob towards another point to picket instead of the center of the city? Or will it all close as it did on previous occasions, a storm in a tea cup, an expensive nothingburger effort?

Regardless of what transpires in the end, the one person who is living and loving it is Bushra. She cannot keep herself off from the cameras and has shot many messages to the “followers of Islam.”

She is announcing her arrival on the stage of PTI leadership without equivocation. For all intents, purposes, and actions, the woman has finally come out of the closet of her housewife canard and is now in the lead of a party that Imran uses as his toolbox to fix, fund, and feed his personal life and nail his political ambitions. (How Imran really feels about the Bushra effect is another matter because he is only wedded to himself and jealously guards his turf.) She wants to tell the world that she holds the fort and totally enjoys waving from its ramparts.

The sight of Bushra marching around on the center stage in the full glare of media publicity, ordering provincial chief minister and ministers like paid munshis, must be giving Imran’s sisters eye sores. They detest the third sister-in-law more than they detested the second one. (As for the first, she was too rich, too well-connected with the UK’s deep state, and monetarily beneficial to the Niazis to be messed with.) The Immi Sisters think Bushra is a hustle person, and she is out there to take over Imran’s political and financial capital—which ironically itself is built with a lot of hustling. They are not wrong, but for now, there is little they can do about Bushra’s arrival and her big bangs.

But the real fear of Imran’s sisters and others in the party is not about Bushra dominating today’s headlines. It is that this can become a vaulting power grab by her. They fear that she, the fantastic phony, might pull off becoming Imran’s replacement and run the show for as long as he sits in jail, which can be quite long. Their apprehension is well-founded. They should know. They have seen Imran do it. If one phony can do it, why can’t another?

 Yes, Bushra is not Imran; yet. It is important to emphasize that phonies, small, medium or big, can succeed. They can exhibit tenacity and perseverance that is generally (and not always accurately) associated with the rightly guided. Sometimes phonies exceed all expectations and manically pursue and achieve impossible goals. Heroism is not just the preserve of the good people. Criminals can muster it wholeheartedly. Dacoits fight and die for their loot. Thieves kill and risk death to hold on to their swag. Bounty hunters walk into lions’ layers for quick buck. For their booty, mercenaries produce tales of bravery to the envy of trained soldiers. To think that fakes can’t be genuinely committed to their fakery is foolishness. The deeper the fake, the harder the effort to win. The bigger the heist, the madder the feist.

Bushra, therefore, presents a clear and present challenge to all those who have been jockeying to take Imran’s place. She is a new factor of instability in a party that is hobbled by a dog-eat-dog culture and is fractured within. As for the Establishment, well, they would be very pleased to see Bushra assume the role of a PTI stalwart who is more equal than the others because of her marriage to Imran but who is singularly incapable of thinking straight. I would not be surprised if Bushra is being given the extra rope to hang the PTI with. Yes, another project. Sigh! Be that it may, Pakistan’s club of Political Phonies has got a new member. And as with the previous ones, she is announcing her membership by banging on the doors of a city that is already busted out of shape by a variety of scintillating scammers. Very unfortunate that should happen on such a beautiful night.