World of fake Super-Heroes is always desperate for a Hero even if that hero turns out to be another fake one. Blunders of Mr Perfect of #Pakistan
Pakistan has been desperate for a saviour for years. What Imran Khan promised them was a Superman Batman saga that collapsed with a big bang once people were hit with the reality that Superman Batman can only be found in movies not real life. Except some cult followers who still have a staunch belief that Imran Khan was, is & will be their Messiah. Imran Khan had the perfect ground fertile with facilitation not just from the masses but institutions as well to grow into a mature leader. However only an unstable fool like Imran Khan could destroy so much opportunity with such massive blunders. Here is a list of blunders Khan made just before & after his removal from office.
1. Loss of Civil Military Alliance
It was the unprecedented success of Imran Khan's government. However, he managed to blow it in just 3 years. Because his ego mattered more. While Pak Army was fighting India on many fronts, they found no one backing them on their homeground when needed. This left a significant dent in Civil Military relations. Imran Khan has a history of not standing by his patrons & comrades. The moment he felt he was too strong he decided to end this alliance & conserve all power within his grip like a totalitarian dictator. This made a lot of eyebrows go up in the circle of military officials. They were not interested in a martial law & had been working day & night to make Imran Khan grow into a successful leader. Now they felt betrayed & abused like a disposable toilet paper. Their concerns over transgressions of his Punjab Cm & his wife's friends remained unheard. Their concerns over rising inflation & poor governance were not given much importance. Army felt the pain of the masses. Like Gen Hamid Gul said that Army only sees the outcries of the masses. If the masses are suffering, army will no longer stand by the leader no matter how much it likes him. Imran Khan overconfident & narcissistic as always failed to perceive the drift & loss of trust. He had been working on pulling together a group within the Generals who endorsed him blindly. He thought that just because he had that group with him, no one could touch him. We all saw that he was wrong. That group could not stop him from losing the No Confidence vote.
2. Poor Choice of Cabinet Members
It was one of the most controversial cabinet that failed to keep any of his campaign promises. In fact corruption was escalated under them. While Imran Khan kept on whining that he can't control the mafia during his government, he failed to discern the simple fact that the mafia was his own CABINET. Corrupt ministers in his government did corruption. As per Transparency International corruption increased during his tenure. He couldn't fix even a single department of bureaucracy. Judiciary remained untouchable for its discrepancies. Police remained politicised. Nothing was going in the right direction. His own members were hoarding basic consumer food items like wheat, rice & oil to profit from the price hikes & the government-sponsored subsidies. It was an entire government gone rogue & corrupt individuals made sure they made the most of this opportunity of having Imran Khan's weak governance.
3. Foreign Policy Disaster
"Imran Khan is rudely ignoring King Salman's greetings during his visit to KSA"
Imran Khan did one UNGA speech that was probably the achievement of his entire career as PM of Pakistan. But in terms of foreign policy, Pakistan was pushed back by 50 years. Shah Mahmood Qureshi was on the wheels most of his time as foreign minister but despite all the meetings & work, Pakistan lost cordial relations with quite a few close allies. One of the biggest reasons behind their failure on foreign matters was their lack of ability to accomodate to their recipient's needs. Basic principle of foreign policy is to listen more than talk & by the end of it present your need in a way that it is perceived as the need of your recipient. However, both Imran Khan & Shah Mahmood Qureshi's foreign policy approach was grossly dictatorial. Even your servants won't take a dictation from you & you expect global leaders to take a dictation from you? Why would they do that? People felt they were being dictated by Imran & Co & they didn't like it. One thing that Nawaz has & Imran doesn't is humility. Once you are perceived as a dominating over-bearing self-proclaimed Mr Perfect- people may be in awe of you as a Mr Perfect BUT people will not do what you tell them to do. Nawaz on the other hand is perceived as a harmless average guy who is always smiling & easy to talk to with minimal attitude reading from a paper....people may not be impressed by him but they do not have to be impressed by him & they DON"T want to be impressed by him. For instance, look at President Xi's personality. No One cares if he can speak english or if he is tall or short, if he is handsome or not, if he has style or not..no one in the 196 countries gives a damn about any of it. Believe it or not...at the end of the day they want to know if he is someone they can work with or not.. This is the one & only thing foreign leaders care for globally. Can we work with Xi or Not? With Imran listening to long lectures on righteousness & humanity- no one wants to hear all of it. People are mostly sleeping through UN's meetings. All people care for is that does Xi have time to listen to my problems & how could he alleviate my issues? Xi has made a mark globally in commerce with his non-condenscending approach...something US has lost & is thus suffering. Imran Khan has a "I am Mr Perfect" aura that is frankly speaking very irritating for any global leader.
4. Loss of Confidence within the Party
A lot of electables that Imran Khan had collected over the years had been through all the previous parties. If they had joined Imran Khan instead of his rivals, reason was because they were looking for a new formula, a new recipe & a new framework. However, soon after elections, they were given a reality check when Imran Khan surrounded himself with advisors who had not even competed in elections. From non-elected Finance ministers to close advisors, Imran Khan gave room to foreign nationals near himself pushing away those who had given up their old political affiliations for him. This is why he lost the vote of no confidence. Because he could not keep the trust of his MNAs, MPAs who felt betrayed by him. They were not good at appeasing him with undue compliments so they were brushed aside to accomodate those who didn't even have a ticket to compete in elections.
5. Breaking the law to avoid the No Confidence Motion
Once Imran Khan realized he couldn't woo back his upset members & loss of no confidence is an inevitable reality, he made another blunder. He decided to break the law. Any PM confronted with VONC cannot dissolve the assemblies. Its unconstitutional. Its a proof of him trying to evade a process of accountability & transparency. If he abuses his power to try to dissolve assemblies, he cannot be fit to rule the country because he has violated the constitution. Ideally, he should have faced the VONC & then tried to challenge it legally without breaking the law. But someone advised him to go rogue and he did. Opposition used his transgression as an opportunity & the judiciary had no choice but to support their legitimate stance. Rest is history. Imran Khan officially lost the vote & had to be ousted from the office consequently.
6. Rejecting the lawful VONC on grounds of a foreign conspiracy
Here is the biggest blunder of his lifetime. Someone asked him to use anti-American sentiment of the masses to his advantage & flood the country with propaganda. That someone had ties with Kremlin & Iran. His own wife was caught on audio conspiring with his head of social media to disseminate fake propaganda online. If Imran Khan had been truthful & honest after being kicked out, he had a chance where he could not only build back his majority in the parliament but he could also lead a legit resistance within the parliament against the current ruling regime's policies. But, Imran decided to quit the parliament in NA. This is as opposed to his attempts to regain his governemnt in Punjab. This was all a series of bad decisions. If you can't prove it, don't claim it. Imran Khan has been alleging baseless fake allegations of corruption on his rivals & top military officials. There is no proof. There is no evidence. Only one rally after another with the same old rhetoric that US is out to get you. I was against it so US removed me. Biggest irony is that most of Imran Khan's funds came from US & its western allies to conduct these nonsensical rallies to mass hypnotize the nation. I think CIA was partying over his blunders & enjoying popcorn watching such epic stupidity.
7. Trying to Strike a deal with everybody means no deal with anybody
Imran Khan has one of the worst advisors in the world. He has tried to strike deals with US while generating venom against US, with Kremlin, with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, with China, with UK, with Talibans....and with COAS while claiming him to be a traitor & even a "pig" as per his troll teams online. This is what Khan is. Khan wants deals with everyone even those he is fighting against & everyone knows that he is with no one so he ends up getting a deal with no one. Kremlin was probably the only driving force with Iran behind his rallies but its reasons are obvious. Russia was at war in Ukraine & needed support of Pakistan military in this war. Russia needed Imran Khan back in power soon. So Arshad Sharif was the latest recruit of Imran's brigade & he was trapped in the tangled web of Russia who shared intel with India. India couldn't lose an opportunity to kill Arshad to heat up Imran Khan's anti-COAS campaign because India had a score to settle with Gen Qamar Bajwa for its multiple defeats under Gen Bajwa's command. Indian journalists were found feasting over anti-state slogans of Imran Khan.
8. Disclosing his facilitators within ISI/Pak Army
Even a 5th grader knows that you should never leak your whistle blowers let alone run hashtags for them & accept on international TV that you have patrons who support you against the top cammand of army an act considered equivalent to treason as per constitutional statutes of Army. But only an idiot too full of himself with least of concern for the safety of his handlers would leak such info publicly. Imran Khan could have said that he has evidence & he will provide it when needed. But no...he wanted the world to know that he had certain handlers feeding him intel. Why would he do this? Why would anyone disclose his secret whistleblowers openly? Another blunder that will cost his handlers everything. Their careers, their medals, their everything...but Khan doesn't care...because he is the self-proclaimed Mr Perfect for whom everyone is expendable..even the top Generals of Pak Army...
9. Wage a Jihad against the state (Haqeeqi Azadi)
Khan would have been the last one to wage any Jihad in a room of warriors even if India claimed to nuke Pakistan during his tenure. Infact it was this very anti-Jihad attitude of Khan that concerned many Generals of Pakistan. When 5th August 2019 happened, Khan came to NA & said to the entire parliament & Pakistan & the world that "should I attack India now?". His attitude for any warrior came out as "non-serious". Khan said he will do vigils, international protests, resolutions but not condone to battle. In one interview, Khan said that he will disable nukes of Pakistan if India does so disregarding the hostilities of Israel-another nuclear threat- towards Pakistan. So now this docile non-warrior Khan wants 22 crore Pakistanis to wage a Jihad on the PTI fund from US/UK/EU against the "state of Pakistan". Not just the political rivals but the top military command as well. Khan has been instigating a civil war since the day he was ousted. But on the night of 10th April when he was forced to leave PMO....the masses refused to come out for him. After 8 months, his long march can only pull in a few thousand people on the streets. This is out of a country of 220 million people. Most of his hype is on social media especially twitter, you tube & facebook. But 99% of this social media campaign is paid for by the PTI funds from UK/US/EU. It is NOT organic. It is like a sponsored advertisement engineered to superficially inflate his political bubble when it is no more than a burst tyre. 22 crore Pakistanis are not going to wage a Jihad against their military & state. Nation has given its verdict in 8 months & this verdict is no different from the one given on the night of 10th April.
10. "It's all about me"-Imran Khan
There is a difference between leadership & cult engineering. A cult engineer makes it all about himself ensuring that his group cannot survive without him. A leader believes in a team & trains people to replace him & acknowledges this publicly that its not him that will make them succeed but it is them. Anyone aware of how PTI works knows how much of a cult it is. Imran Khan is always right. Imran Khan can never lie. Imran Khan can never sin. Imran Khan is the Mr Perfect. This kind of programming can only yield results as poor as PTI has garnered in all these years. Cults can never grow to lead countries as big as Pakistan with 22 crore people. Cults can inspire a few millions BUT 220 millions...no...NOT happening. Imran Khan has used religion, anti-military, anti-US sentiments to grow his masses. Imran has tried to strike deals with Talibans to ensure he has a guerilla force when needed in civil war. He has tried to woo Biden to befriend him all while appeasing Russia publicly. Imran Khan has called up Saudis, Chinese, Iranians, Malaysians...anyone he could make his ally. Yet he is today isolated in an empty cocoon of his over-inflated ego. You can convince a few millions that you are Mr Perfect but you cannot convince 220 million that they are nobodies & nowhere without you.
-Dr FAB, MD
Chairperson Pakistan Islam Positive League