Many people believe that former Prime Minister and Chairman Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan was manufactured by the top breed of privileged engineers (establishment), and I do not find reasons not to believe this. I have described many times in my articles that the triggering point for a need to manufacture a leader, such as the already available ones were not serving the purpose and administering the country smoothly, had become difficult.
Running this country with the parliamentary system is always considered a hurdle among top brass privileged engineers. I always believe that part of their plan was to craft a leader who could later provide the required facilitation for the alternative governing system such as the presidential form of government. The effort of almost one decade of leader construction was to fulfill the agenda to discredit the parliamentary system.
Leader manufacturing was completed and the product was launched with full efficiency and perfect marketing, part of marketing was to establish parallel media in the form of social media, a ready-made well orated narrative of the product being a saviour, and last hope, a salvage and refuge.
Whoever might be the next Alpha of the manufacturing plant, will Group B be so eager to bring their product back on the market and have they a counter plan for the damage its product has done to them? I mean are they planning to stop to buy islands, are they cutting the perks and privileges of their officers, are they ready to face the hatred, crafted by their own product, and do they have a plan for the layman’s questions, which they themselves at the first place and their product at the second place had made a new normal?
All other products were systematically discredited and discarded. During the course of experimentation, the product started showing its flaws, which I, by the way, would have seen from the very first stage with a simple sample testing named “profiling”. When the engineered leader showed his true colours, the top brass decided to put the change in the form of government on the back burner and proposed that it was time to get rid of the lethal experiment.
The story does not end here; the target-oriented mindset finds it hard to accept that their dream product is unable to facilitate them in any manner. The amount of effort in terms of kind and cash cannot simply go into the drain, they have invested too much in it, and even their prestige and position in the society were shoved into this experiment, and turning back seemed suicide.
There is an understanding (or misunderstanding) that the manufacturers got divided into two groups, I will refer to them as group A and group B. Hypothetically group A shouted “retreat” but group B did not agree. Group A tried to reason by showing the bad governance, deteriorating moral values, ruined foreign relations, and slurring and even name calling about them. Group B insisted upon the actual plan.
There is a theory in the market claiming the divide within the institution but I do not buy this theory and believe there is no divide, rather just two teams are assigned to climb the same mountain summit from two different faces (ridges) or an exercise is run in which one group is divided into two groups which assemble against each other.
There are other theories in the market including that the manufactured leader made a few value additions to the already prevailing narrative which was a package deal, and the value addition was to create a narrative against the same institutions that created him. He built up a narrative that “they are a privilege”, he gave the term “billionaire generals”, he reinforced the very term of pushing them to the barracks, which was much hated by his creators. Let me remind you this military accountability narrative was already in the market even before Nawaz Sharif demanded “Vote Ko Izzat Do” and met his unfortunate fate, but a manufactured leader not only sells that narrative but also at a much lower price like a one-dollar shop. Nobody ever touches him for abusing all national institutions including the top leadership of Pakistan Army. There is a saying that one has to compromise on minor issues for greater good.
When the crafted leader failed in every front of governance, group A decided to change its marketing strategy. It is scuttlebutt that group A contacted former opposition leaders including Asif Ali Zardari with the same proposition of ten years of uninterrupted power which eventually shifted to the presidential Form of government; he was also given the option to enjoy it, with the PTI or without it.
Another hearsay is that Zardari chose to be democratic, God knows why, and instead of locking the deal with group A of the establishment, he decided to gather all the political parties and foretell their future and convinced them to gather together.
Rest we all know, that when Imran Khan had almost lost its popularity and relevance, he was voted out from office to gain momentum. Today people are questioning this move and its timing. I can hypothesize an answer for that; this hasty move was to avoid November, Imran Khan being in office in November 2022. If he is, he will seal the deal with the group B, of his next ten years with the promise of the presidential system still on the table, which group A has decided to put on the backburner, maybe because it is getting harder to lose fame and respect in the general population, or maybe because Imran Khan sold the anti-establishment narrative to the extent that can be considered a betrayal, and group A took that betrayal hard and decide to cut him loose, the greater plan for the greater good along with him.
Group B did not stop manoeuvring, and stuck to to the original plan. November is very important, for if Alpha of group B will sit on his desired chair, he will then be able to execute the plan, but how can he be in that chair, if Alpha of group A decides otherwise or the winds in democratic fronts are not favourable?
Whoever might be the next Alpha of the manufacturing plant, will Group B be so eager to bring their product back on the market and have they a counter plan for the damage its product has done to them? I mean are they planning to stop to buy islands, are they cutting the perks and privileges of their officers, are they ready to face the hatred, crafted by their own product, and do they have a plan for the layman’s questions, which they themselves at the first place and their product at the second place had made a new normal?
I am worried about the damages their experimentation and later egoistic division have done to an esteemed institution; I am worried that this damage is non-rectifiable. Their crafted narrative “Imran Khan the saviour” is ultra-popular but with the added value of “establishment must refrain from stopping their saviour who is the ultimate path to prosperity and fortune”.
Maybe engineers are ready to pay this cost, but I am not, I love this institution and consider it Pakistan’s lifeline, and maybe it is a bigger conspiracy than what I think; maybe it is about making Pakistan geopolitically irrelevant by making our backbone dysfunctional by discrediting our institution. If this is the case, we are all doomed.
