Former Prime Minister Imran Khan would not have been so anxious to be ousted if he had come to power with the strength of the popular vote as Nawaz Sharif and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed. He would have expressed his grief and anger and started planning ahead and saying to his colleagues, power comes and goes. When it is gone, it comes back again as a result of constant struggle. If the next election had come, he would have counted his past achievements and at the same time said that he was removed from power prematurely and an attempt was made to harm these great projects, which they started in their first period. If the result of the election was against him, he would have gone to the assembly and taken the seats of the opposition and would have resisted the policies of the new government. Gradually the resistance would intensify and take it to a point where it would carry out constitutional and legal activities such as a no-confidence motion or street protests. If they had a tail, the biggest advantage would be that they would win the next election again.
This was the behavior that Nawaz Sharif and Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed have shown us in the past. Undoubtedly, in the ’90s, the two also took steps against each other, which the Establishment took advantage of. But they never tried to derail the democratic process. For example, it has never happened that former presidents have refused to take oath from a prime minister and his cabinet or resort to misrepresentation such as illness to avoid it. No governor has resorted to delaying the swearing-in of the new provincial government. Not a single speaker or deputy speaker did what Asad Qaiser and Qasim Suri, the former deputy speaker sitting in the assembly on a stay order, did.
During the second term of Benazir Bhutto’s government, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, the Speaker of her party, used the Speaker’s chair to such an extent that when Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto imprisoned Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, to attend the Assembly session. Yousuf Raza Gilani issued his production orders. She forbade him but he refused. Miss Bhutto got angry with Gilani Yousuf Raza got angry with Gilani but the PPP leader made it clear that I am a neutral speaker. I will do what this chair demands of me. In this move, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed did not try to remove her speaker from office, nor did she remove Yousuf Raza Gilani from the party after the fall of the government and that is the beauty of democracy.
But all this is done by the democratic parties which have democratic history and traditions. Nawaz Sharif was ousted three times and Benazir Bhutto twice. They did not resort to any vile unconstitutional tactics to save their power. They themselves left the Prime Minister’s House. It was not even their turn to show them the prisoners’ buses. The issue of the end of Nawaz Sharif’s second term was unique in that he was not even allowed to go but was imprisoned. The charges against him for this imprisonment and for which he was sentenced to long imprisonment and incapacity were so bogus that it was later quashed by the Supreme Court.
The tragedy of Imran Khan is that he is well aware that his rule was made possible by Baba Rahmatay and General Barakte. When his first power was not from the public and he was given the title of “selected” from the very first day, then how he can come back to power again without Baba Rahmatay and General Barkatay’s help?. Even after three successful meetings, pictures of one of their press conferences, which have appeared on mainstream and social media, look like pictures of a very frustrated group. Every Youthia on social media is happy about the success of these meetings Why is Imran Khan and his team in such a state of shock despite the success of these meetings? They should be happy that even if it is too late, the next election will be held in eight to ten months and they will win again. And they should be sure of this victory because the public meetings have been very successful. On the basis of these successful public gatherings, Khan Sahib, according to his habit, should also say, “I will not give up, I will come back to the government soon and put all the thieves inside” but he is not saying that either. He and his team are still in a state of shock.
So in this context some questions arise. One question is why this successful meeting could not bring a smile on the faces of the PTI leadership? And an even more interesting question is why these successful meetings did not create any distress on the faces of the PDM? In Peshawar, they had their own provincial government. After all, why no obstruction was created in the meetings in Lahore and Karachi? The answer is three reasons. The first reason is that Imran Khan and his team are well aware that the most successful rally in their history was the 2011 rally in Lahore. ۔ But when the 2013 elections came, PTI could win only 13 seats in the National Assembly from Punjab. The total number of seats in the PTI National Assembly was only 35, including reserved seats for minorities and women. So Khan and his team are well aware that a successful public meeting is not a guarantee of election victory. It’s just Youthia, who can dance happily ever after.
Another reason for PTI’s frustration and PDM’s indifference is that the sword of foreign funding case is about to fall on Khan’s head. If foreign funding and fraud is proved in this case, then Khan’s political career will be ruined. The third reason is that it seems that the next election to be clean and transparent has become a necessity of the Establishment itself. Institutions seem to be in the mood to clean up their stains. That was in 2018 when the idea was that “stains are good” as if there seems to be no Baba Rahmatay or General Barkatay interfering in the next election. And that is why in the Karachi meeting, Imran Khan suggested to an unknown person to correct the “mistake”.
According to him, the conspiracy was hatched by the United States but it is not known to whom the mistake was being attributed. And why is it not clear what is meant by error? Apparently the 10-year plan was being ordered to be revived. It is as if Khan Sahib does not even know that what is happening on the political scene of the country these days is an attempt to correct the mistake. As a constitutionalist, I strongly hope that all efforts to correct the mistake of 2018 will be successful.
