AT PENPOINT
The disqualification of PTI Chairman Imran Khan from membership of Parliament for the remainder of the term of the National Assembly should not appear much of a hardship to someone who resigned in protest from the House which elected him as Prime Minister, and whose avowed position is not to take up any of the six seats to which he was elected recently, and since limited by the Islamabad High Court. However, it creates something of a crisis within the party, because that disqualification might deprive it of its Chairman, the infighting that might ensue over even acting charge till the next election would not be a pretty sight.
The only thing standing between Imran having to make a call for a Long March and not doing so would be the judicial decision on his disqualification, which has not come. The extreme anxiety of the government and the powers-that-be that there be no Long March means that the disqualification should not be seen as final, but as a sort of bargaining chip. Another bargaining chip is the release of the much-touted video clips of his about which there is so much noise. However, now that he has been ousted politically, he has no incentive not to call a Long March.
There are problems with this, most notably with the financing. The assistance expected from the Punjab government in particular, is apparently not forthcoming. The assistance of those who helped in the 2014 dharna is not being extended. Despite all this, what choice does Imran have? It may be that the Long March may fail even worse than that of May 25, which would end forever his dominance over the establishment.
If he does not demonstrate his power to mobilise the street, he will have no choice but to sit back and face thew various legal cases that are piling up against him. Incidentally, the Toshakhana Refetrence, like the prohibited funding case, is not over with the Election Commission of Pakistan’s unfavourable verdicts. Both verdicts also ordered criminal prosecutions under the law, and the FIA has already made arrests in the cases registered after it opened investigations into the prohibited funding case.
That case has also led to a reference against the PTI to the Supreme Court, seeking its banning. If that happens, then the duration of Imran’s disqualification loses all practical meaning. It should also be noted that it would not stop a new party being registered with the ECP, under a new symbol. Imran might be forbidden from heading it, but nothing could stop him from first contesting the next election, and then being elected parliamentary party leader,
However, conviction in even one criminal case would lead to his automatic disqualification for the term of his sentence, plus five years more. That would lead to unforeseeable consequences. The ECP has refrained from declaring Imran not sadiq or ameeen, and thus liable to lifetime disqualification. However, Mian Nawaz Sharif was disqualified for the same offence of failing to include an asset in his wealth statement. The difference is that the assets in Mian Nawaz’s case were unreceived salaries, which constitute an intangible asset. On the other hand, Imran’s Toshakhana gifts, or the money he got from their sale, were very much tangible assets. Thus, paradoxically, Nawaz fans are going to be as anxious to see Imran get judicial relief from the courts, as that relief will be claimed by Mian Nawaz as well.
Imran has been used to fling mud at his political opponents, and for some of it to stick. He is a past master of the art of using mere accusation as proof of guilt. Now that he is finding himself the target rather than the rabble-rouser, he is crying political victimization. True as this might be, even his supporters will have heard these cries before, from his political opponents, when he was in office.
There is already a precedent for this. Imran Khan was granted transit bail by the Islamabad High Court when he came from KP, where he had holed up to avoid arrest. Similarly, Senator Ishaq Dar obtained transit bail when he returned to Pakistan, so as to avoid having to surrender to the police as an absconder, so that he could approach the accountability court for bail. It would be impossible to deny Mian Nawaz the relief granted Imran, but if he is not granted relief, then Mian Nawaz will have to seek some other method of relief.
The flipside is that any relief to Mian Nawaz will also have to be given to Imran. The only way out for the PML(N) is for it to have Parliament pass a law reducing the period of disqualification for those who are not sadiq and ameen from lifetime, as at present, to some period less than Mian Nawaz has already served, such as five years. The catch would be that Imran would have to wait out that period, which would mean missing the next general election. In that case, the PML(N) would probably hope that much would happen between the 2023 and 2028 elections. Imran is not at an age (he turns 70 next year), when he would look upon a short but substantial disqualification with the same equanimity as a 40-year-old, but it would still be preferable to the dread finality of a lifetime disqualification.
The disqualification is a straw in the wind for those who still insist on being loyal to the institutions, even though they insist that they are apolitical now. Just as the audio leaks can be seen as doing a sort of striptease which will logically conclude with the leak of the compromising video clip, so also are the ECP verdicts threats on an escalatory ladder. The final step may well be Imran’s arrest for high treason.
However, at the moment what he is facing are revelations about his personal corruption. The prohibited funding case showed that he had received funds from prohibited sources, which was bad, but worse was the use of the funds, which he and senior party leaders may well have diverted to personal use. Similarly, while the Toshakhana reference may apparently be about not declaring gifts, or their sale, in time, the real charge is that he was petty enough to sell off gifts, using the provision of the Toshakhana rules allowing him to retain gifts by paying half their assessed value into the Treasury, thus allowing him to keep the difference.
The claim of Imran Khan to be a Mr Clean who will sweep the Augean stables of Pakistan clean of corruption is under challenge. That means that an honest anti-corruption crusader can still be sought. The underlying thesis, that corruption leads to skewed economic decision-making, which in return leads to economic downfall, remains valid. There is the option of claiming that the economy was doing perfectly fine under his watch.
Imran seems to be trying to have it both ways: he wants to claim that his government was performing, and that he was not allowed to perform freely (a more-then-strong hint that he was being held back by the establishment). He would like to be the messiah that the nation needs to escape the trap of corruption, but he may find some resistance against convincing the electorate
that the verdicts of the ECP are incorrect.
Imran has been used to fling mud at his political opponents, and for some of it to stick. He is a past master of the art of using mere accusation as proof of guilt. Now that he is finding himself the target rather than the rabble-rouser, he is crying political victimization. True as this might be, even his supporters will have heard these cries before, from his political opponents, when he was in office.
