Prime Minister Imran Khan started his tenure by vowing to fulfil promises made during the election campaign. He constantly referred to his ability as the captain of that cricket team which had brought home the World Cup. He boasted about having personally trained his party leaders for over a decade. It was given out that the PTI had a highly qualified team of administrators who had delved deep into national issues and had prepared guidelines about how to resolve them after coming to power. The major stress was on uprightness. It was maintained that with an honest PM leading the country, corruption would be eliminated within months. A simplistic Imran Khan declared that the people did not pay taxes when the rulers were dishonest. With a virtuous PM holding office the defaulters would automatically start paying their dues regularly. It was maintained that with the induction of an honest PM, there would be no rise in the prices of essential commodities of daily use. Naya Pakistan would come into being soon after the PTI’s assumption of power. The thinking revealed that the PTI chief had not been a deep studentof history, sociology or human psychology. The thinking caused a lot of harm during the last three years. PTI government set a record of transfers of senior bureaucrats, holding them responsible for the failure of its own faulty policies or its own inefficiency.
After completing three years of his tenure Imran Khan has suddenly gone back on much that he had stood for before assuming power. At the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Housing, Construction and Property Expo, he said Naya Pakistan could not be created by pushing a button. He complained that since people failed to pay taxes there could not be development. Further there could be no change in people’s lot unless there was a change in their mindset combined with a protracted struggle. One wonders if Imran Khan would have won the elections if he had expressed these views during the 2018 campaign instead of promising everyone the pie in the sky.
Imran Khan is fortunate for the opposition which looked formidable despite losing the 2018 elections turned out to be shortsighted and factious, and its leaders lacked the ability to sort out their differences. The PML(N), once considered a monolith, stands divided from top to bottom while the PPP is more interested in wheeling and dealing than fighting the government.
