Byline: Ishtiaq Ahmed
The political mafia and the mob rule has taken over the full control of the country.
I cannot comment on Imran Khan’s arrest because I am not privy to the details of the case against him but the manner of his arrest was wrong particularly in the court grounds as he was due to make his court appearance.
However, Khan’s threatening language at the court must be unreservedly condemned. The PTI supporters should not be celebrating the open defiance of the courts by their leader. Although, we understand their jubilation and excitement after their leader’s release.
It is shameful that the most popular leader of a political party, aspiring to be the country’s next prime minister, should be using the threatening language of defiance in courts. Neither Khan or anyone else is beyond the law. He should at least have been charged and held for the contempt of the court.
The revengeful tit for tat war of attrition between the caretaker government and Khan has reached new heights and has taken an ugly turn.
The sequence of events leading up to the his arrest and the subsequent legal concessions and protection afforded to him are most perplexing.
The institution are seemingly hapless: the government has proven inept, the courts are partisan, the army establishment circumspect, the bureaucracy hedging its bets and the public egged to disregard law and order by country’s most popular leader aspiring to be the next prime minister. These are sad days for the nation.
Pakistan is in disarray and rule-less. The present caretaker government is not capable of containing and bettering the situation. Khan is not willing to come to table or at least to agree to any deal that is not on his terms. This has created a divisive political impasse.
All this is against the background of deepening economic crisis while IMF bailout on hold, worsening law and order, and the country’s principal institutions being clueless as to the way forward.
The current crisis are the culmination of seventy years of political ineptness, unabated elitism, endemic corruption within the highest echelons of governance – government, army, courts, law & order and bureaucracy – and the process of democracy being repeatedly disrupted and thwarted.
The present war of attrition between the government politicians and Imran Khan is personal.
This is clear from the language applied by the most senior politicians of the PDM against Khan fearful of losing their control. They inadvertently have contributed to his popularity. Their misguided ploy to delay the elections to create space for them to take IK out of the election equation at any cost seems to have back fired. Khan has taken full advantage of this despite his inconsistent turns and twitches.
Pakistan is paying the price for vision-less and inept leadership. Some also would add to this disloyal leadership to the national cause and they would not be too far off the truth.
The options for the country out of the current crisis are a few and difficult. A few weeks back my friend Mohammed Ajeeb writing for thepenpk.com floated the idea of forming a national government of all principal stakeholders – politicians , senior bureaucrats technocrats – in order to buy some time to think through a way out of the present crisis which would involve formulating a timeline for the national elections. He was right as this seems the only plausible way forward out of the present unrest.
