There is a famous saying by former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson about planning that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. One doesn’t really know whether the government succeeded in its plans to curtail Imran Khan’s long march or whether Imran Khan landed a solid punch on the government’s face by reaching Islamabad despite all odds. This is debatable but what is not debatable is that all indicators suggest that former PM Imran Khan today is suffering from the same mental anxieties, unease, worries and concerns that Winston Churchill was suffering at the time of the great war. Churchill’s concern about the Americans at that time seem similar to IK’s concern about the current government. The dictum put forward by Churchill about Americans was: “The Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.” IK doesn’t trust this government and the likely chances are that he may not get the relief he has asked for and may have to travel back to Islamabad in the six days given timeline. Is there a guarantor overseeing the settlement between the government and the protesting PTI? Somebody has to step in to stop the Mike Tysons of our politics from playing with the dignity and respect of the common people of this country.
How have we reached this stage where the government feels no remorse for breaking into the houses of people without warrants in the middle of the night? Beating them for executing peaceful marches and protests and arresting them under trumped-up charges? In the Western world, this kind of behaviour is termed modern barbarianism. To understand why our life’s consciousness and our life experiences are different from the Western world, we must first accept that we are not willing to see life as a whole. We live separate lives in different venues and different compartments, which has everything to do with how state power is utilised not to decrease but to increase the prevailing socio-economic equality in this part of the world.
Those currently visiting Paris, Davos and Geneva represent a liberal political party that under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto represented the national social responsibility, redistribution of wealth and elimination of poverty. It represented the socio-democratic left in this country that understood the value of bridging the great divide between haves and have-nots. See where the followers of Bhutto’s legacy have taken his politics — to Davos, Geneva and Paris attending superfluous meetings dressed in Western attire under a paid-leave environment. All this when their people are being disrespected, and their dignity and pride are being squashed under the government boots. Is this Bhutto’s party? No, it’s a popular variant of it — a power-seeking radicalised variant that has forgotten that persons, leaders and their behaviour affect politics as much as politics affect them. The young Bilawal Bhutto may have added the job of a Foreign Minister to his CV but does he know that many people in this country no more assert taking up the membership of the PPP?
