2 years of the Imran Khan revolution | Talat Hussain

Syed Talat Hussain

You can fake many things in life but you can’t fake revolutions. But that is precisely what the Pakistani nation was made to fake on the eve of the fateful elections two years ago. Spurred by the devious script of a country under siege, enabled by carefully-designed and flawlessly-executed national upheavals like Imran and Qadri dharnas and protests by sectarian groups, and fully supported by a courtier media drafted as partner-in-pantomime through spineless seth-owners, a revolution was announced. So arrived Imran Khan with fanfare and frills, riding high, talking loud. Journalists, economists, politicians, and significantly large victims of revolutionary anthems went delirious in ecstasy. Attaboy! What a man!

Also arrived with him bundles of justifications as to why the haloed one must be hailed. When the economy was growing at 5.7 % the nation was told that Pakistan was sinking and needed a savior. When the debt was $20 billions less than today, the nation was told that this bar would break the country’s back and Pakistan needed a towering figure to firm up the financial spine. When inflation was in single-digit and people had jobs the nation was told that a famine of hope was sweeping across the land and the place needed someone clean to bring back the blessings. When life was not impossible a slave media was fed the story that the nation was dangerously divided and needed the healing touch of a messiah. When everything wasn't broken everyone was told that the country needed immediate fixing and Imran was the fixer-in-chief.

He started off with a 90-days timeline to remake Pakistan.

In three moons he had expanded the deadline to six months. 

A month later he added the grace period of a year.  Now two years on he is acting like a petulant loser saying he does not care about his job. His popularity ratings have fallen like deadweight in a pit. Every day he is found fumbling, floundering deeper and deeper into troubled waters, pursuing pointless, meaningless, and hopeless projects and goals.

The country’s economy has tanked. GDP is flat negative. Job losses are the highest in recorded employment history. Departments are being shut down. Thousands of workers have been being laid off. Hundreds of thousands have not been paid for months and see their heads on the chopper in the days ahead in the name of restructuring. Inflation is the highest in the last 8 years. Not a day passes when the nation isn’t shamed by this scandal or that, the latest being the pilots license fiasco that has virtually destroyed the Aviation Industry.

Cement, petrol, flour, sugar, medicines, and most important food are bywords for bozo-the-clown kind of actions, except that they are no laughing matters and have lacerated the public. Begging from friends, borrowing from donors, and stealing from the impoverished people has not helped at all. The country’s vital organs are showing signs of extreme stress.

Where did it all go wrong? First, fake revolutions require fake heroes who act for a while and then collapse mid-stage. Imran Khan was never a god’s gift to humanity as he was made out to be. He was, at best, a promising political force, and at worst, a gold digger looking for a jackpot. The idea that because he had won a world cup, running the government will be a cup of tea for him was asinine, to begin with; it became dangerously idiotic when Imran’s desire was complied with that he needed to be free of the pressure of political opponents to deliver a command performance.

All his opponents were neutralized. Some jailed. Some chucked out of the country. Others had their families and careers destroyed. This caused the second mistake. Free of all concerns, Imran Khan had no compulsion to deliver anything. He was a prima-donna, and others including the mighty Establishment, his makers, were to perform for him. Thus two years were spent pedicuring Mr. Khan as he sat on his high stool playing childish games on twitter. Systems were picked apart. Norms were trampled upon.  The law went out of the window just to keep the odd opera going. This had to go wrong. Revolutionary leaders are doers, deliverers, implementers, trouble-shooters; above all, they are handy workers. They are not prayer-bead fiddlers, full of hoaxes and hot air, dwarfed by their own aging egos. If Imran had any talent to govern anything it died the day he was told that there was no alternative to him.

The third mistake was the fallacious thinking that somehow the country could be run by the pretense of a revolutionary government in front and a deep state calling the shots from behind its scandalous back. Revolutions create clear and single command structures; they don't produce diarchies and absurd hybridities like we have today. Now everyone is doing someone else’s job and not his own. It is a royal administrative and policy chaos.

The final mistake was to spawn a culture of oral violence that turned everything into a joke.  When the mascara of a revolutionary government came off, hellish hideosities came up. Rasheeds, Asads, Zulfis, Fawads, Chauhans, Gills, Ashiqs, Shehzads---a full zoo parade. At their optimum performance level, the pack looks like the old British comedy, “Some-Mothers-Do–Have-Them” cast at work. At their lowest, they seem a physical manifestation of Michael Jackson’s The Thriller lyrics, “Creatures crawling in search of blood to terrorize you all’s neighborhood…”

The result is an endlessly sad and sorry spectacle all around causing public trust in official words to evaporate, making everything look like a clown-act. Revolutions elevate discourses, energize ideas, nourish intellect, and produce class thinkers. Here a trashcan has been opened reflecting a circus no civilized eye should behold.

Directionless the country has become a lab of experiments not worthy even of comic books. Selling cows and cars to save money; exporting donkeys to generate foreign exchange; promoting chickens for employment.

Vested interests are loving it. They have got a treasure island in front of them. They are lining up their pockets as the government sits picking its nose and faults in its opponents.  Revolutions uproot the rentiers. Here they have come on top with a vengeance.

The Imran project has failed spectacularly. Those who once called it a revolution are now too embarrassed to even associate themselves with it. They are passing the buck around but in vain; the whole world knows where the buck belongs.

But this nightmare is unlikely to end. The thing about fakeness is that once it is embraced fully, it is hard to let go, especially if your desperately-desired job and privilege depend on it.  So nobody wants to admit that what they sold to the nation two years ago as gold was just trash. They continue to pretend life is good. So the fake revolution continues, daily alternating between farce and tragedy, running the country aground, grinding people’s lives, and hopes to dust.