Abdul Basit Alvi
Imran khan and PTI has introduced several dangerous and unethical trends which were never seen before his arrival into the politics of Pakistan. After Khan disclosed to the public, in violation of state secret legislation, a diplomatic cable from the US urging action be taken to remove Khan in a coup on 8 March 2022, opposition parties submitted a motion of no confidence against him to the National Assembly’s secretariat. On 1 April 2022, Prime Minister Khan announced that in context of the no-confidence motion against him in the National Assembly, the three options were discussed with “establishment” to choose from viz: “resignation, no-confidence [vote] or elections”. On 3 April 2022, President Arif Alvi dissolved the National Assembly of Pakistan on Khan’s advice, after the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly rejected and set-aside the motion of no confidence; this move would have required elections to the National Assembly to be held within 90 days.On 10 April, after a Supreme Court ruling that the no-confidence motion was illegally rejected, a no-confidence vote was conducted and he was ousted from office, becoming the first prime minister in Pakistan to be removed from office by a vote of no confidence. Khan claimed the US was behind his removal because he conducted an independent foreign policy and had friendly relations with China and Russia. Readers, I seen many articles written on the subject of reasons behind failure of Imran Khan. Farrukh Javed Abbasi also wrote a very comprehensive article last year. I will use the details collected from his essay and many other sources to prove my words. The most important reason for Imran Khan’s failure was his overconfidence. He thought himself as Aristotle and others as illiterate. His speeches also resembled the reflection of his mentality in which he used to show that he is the only genius in the world and all others know nothing. As prime minister, Imran Khan never respected or acknowledged the role of the opposition. He closed all doors of legislative negotiation and kept pushing for draconian victimization of his opposition. He got caught up in the competition and forgot about his performance. Every word you utter is a policy of the country, but Imran Khan’s constant desire to just be a winner and an aggressive leader forced him out of negotiations in a lot of key legislative processes, and he had to work with Law Minister to use presidential ordinances to run Pakistan. He was practically a dictator and not a leader of parliament for his 3.5 years in power. In the game of parliamentary politics, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir’s success didn’t come from vicious victimization of others but from becoming national leaders and choices for the entire country. Imran played the game wrong and pushed himself into a very difficult spot. Another reason for Imran Khan’s failure was lack of his competence. Nawaz Sharif started as a finance minister of Punjab and was under the guidance of General Gilani’s government. He spent time in the Punjab Assembly and moved up to become the chief minister of Punjab first, where he started the politics of development and learned how to run the country, which ultimately made him a prime ministerial contender and prime minister thrice. Imran Khan kept pushing to become Pakistan’s prime minister from 1996 to 2018 and stayed out of the legislature due to his vociferous denial of acknowledgement of the system of parliamentary democracy. To become a good prime minister, you must be an avid reader and a good foreign policy, economics, and administrative generalist. A lot of politicians are avid readers of local and international newspapers and are aware of almost everything that is going on. Being articulate on all areas of the country and being aware of the country’s issues should be a very basic pre-qualification for the leader of the house. Imran Khan’s foreign policy speeches sounded elitist. His two-pronged policy of building aggression towards the US coupled with his foreign affairs team’s back-channel begging for a call from the US President showed that he had no idea of foreign policy. He didn’t engage the Saudis or Emiratis in bringing the US to the table. His national security adviser isolated Pakistan in the Afghanistan withdrawal situation. It was a golden opportunity for Pakistan to portray itself as a key ally to the US in the war on terror and a partner in Afghanistan’s peacekeeping process. Imran’s economic team’s delay in going to the IMF and halting CPEC created an economic crisis in Pakistan. Hiring Reza Baqir despite Reza’s catastrophic performance in Egypt was also a very incompetent decision. In the last three decades, Reza’s monetary policies led to the highest inflation rate. The lack of support for the Ministry of Petroleum and Ogra on petroleum products was also a blunder. Starting a NAB case against Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and backing out of the cheapest LNG agreement in global history showed that Imran Khan’s energy team was focused on his agenda and did not review the LNG contract. Imran Khan’s strategy was only focused on putting an end to the politics of his opposition, not on himself and his party’s competence. He was the only political leader in Pakistan who had the chance to learn the system for 22 years before becoming the country’s prime minister. He had five years of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to learn from. He also had the support of the powers that be; no opposition at the start of his tenure; the ability to put anyone in jail for any case he wanted to; and the full backing of most in the media. Instead of learning how to run the government in his 22 years of political ‘struggle’, he kept insisting that everyone in Pakistani politics was a thief. Instead of researching his economic policies, he delegated them to Asad Umar, did not allow Asad to work for a few months, and replaced him with two previously tested and failed finance ministers. There is no way a person with that kind of mindset of oppression, weak decision-making capabilities, and zero ability for team building was an ideal person to run the affairs of the fifth most populated country in the world. Imran Khan promised to establish a state resembling Riassat e Madina in which justice and all facilities will be equally provided to all and without any sort of discrimination. He failed to set such a model State and proved it as just a political stunt. He promised to provide one crore jobs and fifty lakh houses but in reality thousands of people lost their jobs and thousands remained homeless. Readers, Imran Khan also have been using the name of Islam for gathering political favor from people. I received a video from a reliable source few days ago indicating an incident during PTI Jalsa on Eid ul Fitr in which a boy while addressing PTI Chairman Imran Khan says that the first luckiest parents of the world were Hazrat Abdullah and Hazrat Amna as Almighty Allah blessed them with a great son Hazrat Muhammad(PBUH) while the second luckiest parents were Ikram Ullah Niazi and Shaukat Khanum to whom got blessed with a son like Imran Khan. People have strongly condemned this sort of resemblance of an ordinary person with our great Holy Prophet. Imran Khan, the leader of the PTI, has adroitly exploited the sentiments of the people by the utopian promise of forming a Riasat e Madina, and the use of religious jargon in his public speeches. On 26 May, on the occasion of the Long March on Islamabad, former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly Qasim Suri whispered in the ear of Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan to give an Islamic touch to the speech to entice the listeners, who were the party’s supporters. Incidentally, the media’s microphones captured the whisper and revealed the way the political pulpit had been playing with the sentiments of the listeners. Khan acted accordingly by configuring a sentence on the spur of the moment proclaiming his affection for the Prophet (PBUH). The episode took place just before Khan called off the March. Readers, Imran Khan and his party has also been involved in defaming Pak Army despite of its notable services for the country. Their speeches are on record. Recently, the confession of Dubai-based Abdul Rehman Kamal, who is propagandizing against the Pakistan Army on social media, has come out. Abdul Rehman Kamal admitted that he was spreading toxic propaganda against Pakistan Army from Dubai as a social media worker of a political party PTI for the last 6 years. Abdul Rahman Kamal said that he was running three fake accounts on Twitter and one on Facebook. His main account on Twitter was under the name of a woman named Raheela Sadpara, which he regularly used to spread venomous propaganda against the Pakistan Army and martyrs, while his Facebook identity was Sarang. Abdul Rehman was also spreading propaganda against Pakistan Army by pretending to be an SSG officer with an account called Ababil. Abdul Rehman said that he is related to PTI for many years and he was spreading poisonous propaganda against Pakistan Army and martyrs on the account of PTI through his Raheela Sadpara account. By using such people in a systematic way, the nefarious elements are busy spreading propaganda on social media against the institutions and especially the Pakistan Army against whom it is the responsibility of the state to take action as per the law. The public and institutions are aware of such elements and will continue to thwart the elements spreading chaos in the country with their mutual cooperation. Imran Khan should know that the politics of anarchy, dirty war against national institutions and repeated use of religion card has not helped any politician and it will not do him any good. Complete separation of state and religion may not be possible in Pakistan. But instead of blowing the Islamic trumpet and enforcing moral policing, he should have been concentrate on the grave economic conditions, education, unemployment, terrorism, and genuine political values. The culture which he has introduced is not in the favor of Pakistan.