I got a long angry email from a reader this week. It began by chastising me for not covering the recent elections in the country, but quickly moved onto how it was predictable that liberals like myself would avoid the “wave of truth” that is sweeping across the nation. It was expected, the letter argued, that I wouldn’t congratulate Imran Khan and the PTI on his victory because we are, and I quote, “the rot that has made this country weak.” It went on for a while actually, the tone alternating between gloating and accusatory, before ending by urging me to do more travel writing. I think it would be unfair of me to print the exact name of the writer, but it was signed by Lt. Colonel (Retd), so for the purposes of this column (and because you’re clearly a fan) allow us to call you Colonel Khan.
Let’s start unpacking this, shall we? First off, I’m thrilled you took the time to write to me and although I suspect that your suggestion to continue travel writing is a circuitous way of telling me to ‘sod off’, I’m grateful you would encourage a genre so few writers get to tackle these days. I want to take this happy Friday, Col. Khan, to address your letter because I think it may make your day a little brighter – but mainly because I’ve been thinking about the election myself.
A picture of the late artist Qutub Rind
When it first became apparent in 2011 that Imran Khan’s PTI was getting some serious backing by the Powers That Be to become their pick for PM, I tried to consider what he and his party offered. The youth were supposed to be his constituents –if you believed the hype he was the hip, cool, pro-Pak, anti-establishment candidate. I admit: I liked the idea of a debonaire ex-athlete with liberal leanings entering the ring of Pakistani power plays, but it wasn’t long before I recognised this for the myth that it was. Over the next several months it became apparent that any apparent projection of good sense was nothing more than a misinformed judgment based in large part on his pictures from the 1980s and because his ex-wife was dating Hugh Grant. Over the years we have seen a man who was willing to go to any lengths — any lengths — to gain power over the country, largely because he felt power was owed to him.
When he did not win the 2013 election, he behaved in a way similar to a petulant egoist, holding the capital hostage for months, shouting about corruption and demanding recounts. It did nothing productive, and he only stepped down from that container when the optics of being up on there after the Army Public School massacre became too unpalatable. To disagree with him is not to be “pro-corruption”, as so many of his followers insisted then (and now) but rather to recognise that Khan is not, as his PR campaign has claimed, a saviour that will bring sweeping reform. He is not a change of the status quo. He is the status quo. How no one else can see that is more depressing to me than shocking.
When seen in the light of fact, he is not a centrist candidate at all. He is right-wing and ultra nationalistic—toxically so— and it would be shortsighted to confuse this with patriotism. In all his rampages about the rights of people and the power of democratic vote, he has never once criticised those most responsible for undermining democratic power in the country. He rants against the “liberal fascists” of the country and the corrupt leaders (again, only civilian corruption concerns him) whom he claims benefit from the largesse of foreign money, all while totally unwilling to acknowledge the biggest beneficiaries of those funds. His hypocrisy in this, as in so much of what he purports to represent but conveniently disregards when it’s opportune to him (like women rights, minority rights, corruption, blasphemy), is only one of the many reasons I am afraid for the next five years. I fear that whatever small steps our country took towards civilian supremacy in the last decade have been eviscerated in favour of a pantomime of progress and I am not sure when or even if we will be able to regain that lost ground.
This week we all read about the artist Qutub Rind who was murdered in Lahore. Early reports were hazy and suggested that he had been murdered for alleged ‘blasphemy’, a story that went viral. Newspapers and his family eventually clarified that it was not ‘blasphemy’. His landlord and two thugs killed him over a rent dispute. They broke both his arms and legs, and threw him off a third-storey building and even confessed to the crime of murder, but later changed their reason to ‘blasphemy’ in the hope that the murder will seem more palatable to people if it were seen as avenging God rather than their pocket books!
So the truth is that I am scared, Col. Khan. I really am. I afraid of what happens when democracy - even one as flawed as ours - has been taken over by people we cannot hold accountable. I am afraid of what happens when those people decide a newspaper isn’t printing the “Right Things” and effectively ban it from distribution. I am afraid that a weakened civilian opposition and a pliant government will lead to an atmosphere that creates more people like the killers of Qutub Rind – obfuscating their crimes in issues like patriotism, treason and blasphemy, and that we won’t be able to do anything about it. I am scared of what will happen to our courts, to our land, to our foreign policy and to our civil liberties.
