CITY NOTES
Well, it’s official. Imran Khan is as transactional as Donald Trump. By preventing his party from attending the meeting of the National Security Committee, he showed that was more concerned about himself than the wave of terrorism that has been spreading through the country.
That was probably no surprise to anyone who opposes Mr Khan, while it provides his supporters the opportunity (which they will miss) to see that he has become another politician who believes that the national interest and his personal and political interest are one and the same thing.
Imran wanted to be released from jail. Well, what brilliant ideas was he going to bring before the NSC? Give Ali Amin Gandapur a haircut? Maybe, this time it would be a shaving of the head. Ali Amin attended the meeting, but does not seem to have been seen. Perhaps he was slumped over in his seat (or perhaps even under it), sleeping off the effects of his potations the night before.
Perhaps Imrn would have suggested that political leaders (like himself) should reach out to the people of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa in the shape of lecture tours. Long, long lecture tours, with two- and three-day gaps between lectures which would let him pop over to Lahore for a little rest and recreation.
You know, like the Long March such a long time ago, so rudely interrupted at Wazirabad by the assassination attempt onImrn Khan, when he only escaped with his life by doing some ducking and weaving reminiscent of The Matrix. The procedure had been for the procession to inch forward a few kilometres, with Imrn going back to Lahore for night, and rejoining the procession at the place it had reached. When the procession reached Rawlpindi (which it did when Imran had recovered from his wounds), joining it from Lahore was just a few hours’run.
That’s how Imran has done things all along. I mean, during the D-Chok dharna back in 2014, he went to his Bani Gala residence every evening, returning the next morning. Well, late afternoon, actually. And now he’s a decade older, so if you’re to send him into the Baloch and KP hinterland, you need to provide sufficient time for naps.
I suppose Imran Khan would lecture the Baloch and the people of KP about reverse swing. At the same time, he would warn them of the dangers of Shaheen Shah Afriei getting on the same page. I mean. He got whupped in that fourth T20I, when Pakistan gave up the series against New Zealand.
Perhaps nothing was more poignant than Pakistan having lost on Pakistan Day. I’ve tried to follow the intricacies of the captaincy, where it seems that, having lost the T20 captaincy because we lost the 50-over Champions Trophy, Rizwan keeps the 50-over captaincy. So why not make Azam Khan, the man-mountain, the captain?
FOOTNOTE TO THESE NOTES: The ceasefire in Gaza has come to an end. Well, in the last few days it wasn’t much of a ceasefire, was it? I’m not sure what exactly was ended. With the ceasefire, one did sehri and iftar under threat of bombs in Palestine.
Now with no ceasefire, one does sehri and iftari under threat of bombs. And I’m talking about over here, in KP and Balochistan. And the government has not let the only man, apparently, who can talk to them, Imran Khan, loose.
