Unmaking of Imran, the I-Con man | Part 2

Imran Khan tried to become the sole center of national gravity by becoming a cult personality and thought that state of Pakistan was a piece of real estate that he now owned...

Imran is facing a complete rout of his party. Most of his closest stalwarts and ticketholders for the next elections have left him. Many have delivered a devasting parting kick by saying that they cannot condone the burning and looting that took place on 9th May that Imran is largely blamed for orchestrating. His party office bearers, too, are calling it quits even as he sits in his chair practically every day and “addresses the nation” from his pet echo chamber, the social media. His words of encouragement to his followers sound desperate as he mixes threatening rhetoric and impassioned appeals for dialogue in repetitive speeches with the drumbeat of I, Me, My, and I. From the looks of it, in another few weeks, almost the entire party can possibly desert him to either join his opponents or form their own factions. What is happening to Imran?

The 2014 attack on Islamabad

An insightful answer to his present woeful political existence can only be found by turning back the clock to 2014, when he made landfall on the political scene like an invading army, stomping the earth, roaring into the air, and warning everyone to make way or else be trampled out of existence. This was his infamous dharna (sit-in, but actually a siege) of Islamabad. He was to stay there from mid-August 2014 to 17 December. Hundreds of cameras would cover his inane but exceedingly violent and inciteful ‘speeches’, 24/7 with religious dedication. He would only wind up the circus --- he had a bulletproof container as his lair, a cesspool of much personal and political mischief --- after the terrorist attack on the Army Public School that killed 150, including 134 students.

There was nothing azad (independent) about this so-called Azadi March. This was conceived by the Establishment to fast-track Imran’s ascent to power by literally breaking down the electoral system that had yielded yet again a government of the PML-N. The new Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif, was a weakling. He was taken over quickly by the strongmen around him who hated the Sharifs. They were all groomed in their early years by General Musharraf who hounded this family with pleasure and passion. These officers also had no love for the PPP that they now equated with Asif Ali Zardari demonized for years for corruption and political thuggery.

Horrors of a forgettable general

At the time of General Raheel’s appointment, the outgoing army chief, General Ashfaq Pervaiz Kiani, prophetically warned PM Sharif that the man was not qualified to head the army because of his infirm command and poor leadership record. General Raheel never forgave General Kiani for this honest assessment. During his tenure, he ensured that his predecessor suffered a media trial on account of financial controversies involving his brother. But Nawaz Sharif made his choice, again a poor one, as he had done in the case of General Musharraf and would do so later in the case of General Bajwa. The commanders around General Raheel abolished the Kiani model of “slow and steady” nurturing of Imran and resorted to his guerilla marketing through political chaos, street and judicial disruption, and controlled anarchy. Imran danced in joy. He loved the bridal shower.

As one of the architects of the Azadi March told me months before Imran took to the roads: “2013 was disappointing. Imran’s best electoral performance did not bring him to power. The (beep) Sharifs are back. Imran needs to be catapulted to power. Streets are the way to go.” I wrote a piece for The Newsline Karachi, based on these background briefings (part of the record) and in July forecast exactly how this Azadi March was to unfold for the Sharif government.

The script was immaculately implemented. Imran was given the additional legions of Tahirul Qadri, a glib, rent-a-religious leader cum part-time politician, some of whose followers were killed in a suspicious police raid in Lahore and was now primed for revenge.

The Canada-returned Dr Qadri joined Imran Khan and they all brought in around 15,000 people to Islamabad. The legend that was spread however was that half a million strong protestors were now in control of Islamabad’s streets and they would drag the Sharif government out of the city! The Establishment’s gambit was wicked: make the Sharif government look like a house of cards and force it to rely for survival on the Army whose chief would then cut a deal for Imran, call-in fresh elections, and also ask for his own extension in service. (General Raheel was desperate to become Field Marshall---the lower the competence the higher the ambition) The media ---totally controlled and manipulated --- projected Imran as Mr. Hulk and his opponents, dotting dwarfs, quivering, quaking, running for cover.

The Drama

To add to the drama, crowds ransacked government buildings, broke through perimeters of the parliament, dug up empty graves in front of the National Assembly building, thrashed police officers, and hung dirty clothes on the outer walls of the Supreme Court whose judges tucked their honorable faces in their robes and carried on with life. This was a power grab that used mayhem as a tool of political legitimacy.

One of Imran’s sisters called it a “people’s revolution”; her brother in one speech said that he wanted the revolution to be quickly completed because (believe it or not) he wanted to get married! (Not to Ms Bushra, the current wife, but to Ms Reham the now ex-wife). Imran stayed there for months, addressing empty chairs and spewing poison against the government. As crowds dwindled to a few dozens and the Sharif government, besieged and befuddled but not close to collapse, weighed its options, Imran was unable to make the final push because as a chronic freeloader, he lived by a simple code: Why Don’t You Just Do It For Me?

The Establishment wanted him to show some spine and physically take over the buildings including the PM House. He didn’t, thinking that Nawaz Sharif would automatically call it quits or the Army would seal the deal of his negotiated exit. But then the tragic attack on Peshawar school happened. The plan had to be folded up. Imran declared moral victory, came out of the container, and married Ms. Reham when the nation was still mourning the slain children

.The Establishment, distracted momentarily by the terror hit, spent a year covering its abysmal security failure, only to return again to the chessboard of the Imran Project in early 2016 when Panama-gate hit global headlines.

Panamagate

As the Sharif family’s name also found a mention in the papers, a nationwide campaign began that PM Sharif should be probed for his alleged corruption through money laundering. While the 2014 siege of Islamabad was like Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, this phase of the Imran Project involved a judicial witch-hunt akin to McCarthy’s America when legal arguments were concocted to simply put the “undesirables” on trial and prosecute them. The new COAS, Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, sensed a great opportunity to simply expand his influence using Panama as an excuse.

The following trial and its verdicts tore into the Sharif family’s reputation and evicted Nawaz Sharif from power by disqualifying him on a charge that had nothing to do with the Panama Scandal. The judges disqualified him for not declaring a paltry sum that his son’s company deposited in his account as receivables. Later the disqualification was extended to life through another verdict. The Imran Project’s launch pad was now complete. The most formidable foe of Imran was broken to a thousand pieces.

TLP siege

The remains of the Sharif party were pulverized through another siege of the capital by the newly-launched religious group, the TLP, that choked Nawaz Sharif’s successor on the explosive charge that the government was inserting a “blasphemous” clause in the oath of public representatives that softened absolute commitment to the finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (PBUH)

.Paramilitary forces deployed to disperse the crowd refused to implement the Khaqan Abbasi government orders and forced the entire writ of the state to simply melt away before rampaging crowds. The law minister had to step down and an agreement was signed with the protestors. The agreement had a special mention of the efforts of the “army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and his team, (spearheaded by General Faiz as DGC) for saving the country from a disaster.”

An army general became famous for distributing money among the departing protestors whom he was heard telling on camera that they were like him.

Now the Sharifs were finally defined as financially corrupt, religiously questionable, morally bankrupt, and not worthy of ever ruling again. The Army under Bajwa was in control of the levers of power. Their product, Imran Khan, was towering over his opponents, wallowing in the glory that was shining on him. The judiciary was stuffed with judges hateful of all politicians except Imran. The media, along with social media, was pressed into service for reinforcing the image of traditional politicians as anti-Pakistan and to hold up Imran as the country’s real destiny. The Establishment had won. Imran had arrived.

Skyfall

But even more important was what Imran Khan learned from this entire phase----that a handful of generals, a group of compromised judges, a couple of dozen media outlets, and mass hysteria and Goldsmiths can bring him to power. He also assumed that the Establishment had no alternative other than him to run the country. This was an ego-inflating drug stronger than any powdered substance, and he snorted and snuffed it to the hilt. In his power high, he kept on moving farther and farther away from the real world where the Army still called many shots and politics remained an art beyond his Twitter universe. He tried to become the sole center of national gravity by becoming a cult personality and thought that state of Pakistan was a piece of real estate that he now owned---a fatal mistake that has now brought him to the point of witnessing his own unraveling by the very hands that made him.

“This is the end….hold your breath and count to ten…” Adele, Skyfall.