Oops! He did it again
When you can repeatedly engage state power and market scenes like those the nation has witnessed Saturday, you are on the power table.
Let us admit it. As far as chaos-creation and mayhem-making is concerned, Imran Khan is calling the shots. Saturday’s incursion led by CM KP, Ali Amin Gandapur, shows how. Like many times before, both power cities of Pakistan, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, were logistically dysfunctional. Thousands were trapped on the roads for endless hours, cursing their luck and those who had put up the blockades. The main roads connecting Punjab to the KP, Islamabad to Punjab, and Islamabad to KP were shut. Even areas that had little or no hindrance were deserted. No one wanted to step out when the air was filled with madness.
Social media videos and pictures of small groups fighting the police and the KP CM using a broken province’s over-drafted resources “leading” a caravan towards Pindi (the Establishment’s citadel) grabbed mass attention. So did tear gas shelling and the cat and mouse between the Punjab police and the marchers. As before, farthing-worth twerps took to Twitter (X), spewing hate, spreading poison, lionizing agents of instability. Their mouths motored through Vulgar-Logs and many paid pipers on the mainstream media called this sorry sight, “people’s anger”.
All this was orchestrated and triggered by Imran Khan from jail which he has used during his case hearings as a regular meet-the-press room. All that he says is dutifully reported and projected by all media houses. In the case of this protest call, the same was true. His party lawyers did the rest of the projection, and of course, his sister who is engaged in an expanding turf battle with Bushra Begum, which makes her stunts more daring and virulent. (Saturday, she claimed that she traveled to the venue of the protest with the assistance of the protocol that a judge provided her)
So the whole day and much of the night—and because of the timing, Sunday’s newspapers and Monday’s TV programmes too—are all dominated by what Imran commanded from behind bars. This is formidable clout. When you can repeatedly engage state power and market scenes like those the nation has witnessed today, you are on the power table. As any guerilla warfare guide will tell you, small forces don’t have to inflict big damage on big opponents to claim victory. They only have to engage them on their terms and make them spend energy, time, attention, and resources with small hit-and-run attacks. The big power looks small by doing big things to small opponents; the small opponents look big by doing small things to big powers. And when there is social media at work, crossing a bridge, upturning a barricade, chasing a policeman, or even getting out of a car (fully dolled up and cameras in position) and wagging a finger at the “enemy” sitting hundreds of miles away can be painted as splendid heroism achieved by pure sweat, toil, blood, and tears. That’s what Imran and his party have repeatedly done to the Establishment and both governments at the center and in the Punjab. He has made them respond and create “war news” out of a string of flimsy protests. He has retained the initiative and dominated the center stage.
The Establishment thinks that soon enough these tactics will run out of steam. Saturday’s protest, which anti-climaxed with Gandapur’s return without completing his journey of a thousand threats, is being projected like this: another failed effort. The Establishment thinks that it is only a matter of time before these repeated protests would fall on deaf ears and eventually run aground. The Establishment believes that soon enough Gandapur would become the petard that would hoist the PTI’s popularity out of KP. (A sagging elephant falling under his weight and destroying everything in his vicinity as he tumbles. That sort of a calculation.) This sounds fantastically familiar. This is exactly how Imran Khan was supposed to “lose popularity after 9th May” and his party was supposed to “fall apart” and the judges were to see “writing on the wall” and the country was to “heave a sigh of long relief.”
None of the above has happened. All you have is a man in the jar who continues to defile the national scene by simply wagging his tongue. Also, so far there is no evidence to suggest that the state has any policy other than to simply block and jam everything and see off another day of shame. The country continues to collect losses to its credibility and image. And the people continue to bear the brunt of it all, with many wondering how the PTI does all of this and gets away with it and how tall are these claims that the PTI “won’t be allowed to do it again.” And while the nation was fed piles of trashy news and even trashier views about Gandapur’s Groundhog Day, and his throaty tosh, Israel killed Hasan Nasrullah and the Indian Prime Minister Tweeted this:
So right, he always disrupts state power through small, strategic actions that force the authorities to react. Social media then amplifies these minor acts, making them big. Let's see what is next.
Very good insight of Imrans policy and its implications on the power players. clearly, they need to change the way they deal with IK. Let us see who gets tired first. One thing is sure, the more room you give IK, he will ask for even more.