Imran circus: the final act

What we have witnessed today is closure of the Imran Project that I have spoken and written about extensively over the years.

Syed Talat Hussain

There is nothing amusing or entertaining about the final act of the Imran circus: his conviction by the court on corrupt practices and deliberate and willful misdeclaration of assets. The punishment---3 years in prison, 100,000 fine or 6 months extension of imprisonment---may be music to the ears of those he tormented, taunted, tortured through fake cases and jail terms that he himself supervised when in power, but, nationally, there is nothing to celebrate. In fact, it is fairly depressing.

One, what we have witnessed today is closure of the Imran Project that I have spoken and written about extensively over the years. It is not a new chapter being added to politics; rather it is a case of an expensive but useless political engineering document being junked. The nation’s economic suffering, its missed opportunities, its lost decade, its complete derailing of rationality are some of the costs of this experiment. These debts cannot be paid by putting Imran in the lock up.

Two, this is not a case of justice being served. Don’t get me wrong. Imran’s hedging and dodging on the fate of the expensive gifts that he got from foreign governments and then sold them for billions while never declaring their possession in his tax returns, is an open and shut case of malpractice. What I am saying that is that just as obvious is the fact that he would not have come to this point in his career if he had not fallen afoul of the very Establishment he once revered and then trashed and attacked on 9th May.

Imran’s shenanigans were/are countless. He is arguably the most successful political fraud of modern times, who faked his way to glory, harnessing his celebrity, his fame and, his global connections and social media to pose as a revolutionary that he never was/is. He knows little of how to govern a complex country and believes even less in any particular ideology. All he has is a deadly survival instinct and special talent for acting. That he was propelled to power by the Establishment and was allowed to run every system aground to feed his ego for years is a monument of shame. Today he is in jail but his backers--- ex generals, judges, businessmen, politicians, religious leaders---who first inflated then inflicted him onto the country are living their lives as before. There is no accountability of even those who spent long years with him and co-authored national disorder (mental, social, political, financial) just because most of them have availed of the “plea bargaining” option----dumping Imran and then leaving his party and his support. Imran was not alone is being the pain that he has turned out to be, about which most of his former lovers are now lecturing us about. He was a syndrome, a group of malignancies that combined to sustain him. He is in the shredder. The group has survived.

Third, in his success as a con man, he did become an icon for a vast number of his supporters who live in Pakistan as well as abroad. They continue to see him from the very lense that was provided to them in the hey days of his launch (2011). They don’t see his feet of clay. They are addicted to his jaws of steel that have moved for years churning out oversimplified political propaganda about him being great and others being dirt, him being the last hope and others being the hole in the ship, sinking the country. His party became the political expression of a great expectation to see deep reforms being done in Pakistan, which the country surely and desperately needs it. They voted for him. They funded him. They adored him. But now with his miserable end being in clear sight, this party’s support-base would be fragmented into hate, anger, disappointment and distrust of the entire political system. In any form, those who rallied for him would not be factors of stability in the country now that he is facing political annihilation. While the Imran Project was political engineering, those who stood for him were genuine voters. Their anxieties, fears and desperations are now locked into national politics for years to come. This country was not well-served when Imran was installed. Now that he is convicted and is disqualified from political office for 5 years (he has appellate forums available), it only addresses part of the problems that his hype created for Pakistan. The explosive social and political divisions that have emerged all these years are here to stay. You can jail a man. You cannot jail the consequences of his actions.