PTI chief Imran Khan had earlier seemed not to realize that the country was being buffeted by record floods. He had continued with a rally programme that saw him threaten in Gujrat to take another long march to Islamabad. Though there has been no contradiction of this, former Interior Minister Sh Rashid Ahmad has said that the long march will be held after the flooding is under control. The floods have made Mr Khan ready to mould his political programme around them. It is likely that the Jhelum rally some days ago, which was thinly attended because of the flood warnings given because there was a surge passing though at that time, may have convinced Mr Khan that the floods could interfere with his programme.
However, he has not given up. At long last, he is visiting South Punjab, particularly Rajanpur District and its Rojhan tehsil. Of course, that does not mean he will give up politics because he addressed a rally in Dring Stadium, Bahawalpur. However, he has still to push the provincial governments of KP and Punjab towards more focus on the relief efforts. His failure to do so has meant that these provincial governments have not really gotten on the ground with the relief effort. The Balochistan and Sindh governments have not done much better, so it is not really a PTI malaise.
However, the PTI should be more aware than the other parties, particularly those in power at the Centre, that just as economic non-performance is punished, so too is flooding response. Whereas as the PTI will benefit from the country’s current poor economic performance, it might find itself wanting when people weigh up its response to the floods, both at the provincial level, in the provinces where it is in office, and at the more global level of how Mr Khan responded at the personal level. If nothing else, the need to get back in office should drive Mr Khan to making more of a show of taking part in the flood relief effort than he has at the moment. Mr Khan has so far not shown any sign of heeding the call of President Arif Alvi, Mr Khan’s former Secretary General, to politicians to put politics on the backburner.
