Naively curious

Published May 16, 2014

SOME of us are constrained — by our narrow vision or because of a general lack of understanding of evolving rules — to see the simple, the more basic side to things. They might be perturbed by the sound of a Faisal Raza Abidi shouting at the top of his voice.

They may even be angry at him blurting out innuendoes, but at the end of it they still want to ask whether some effort has been made to address the basic point that he has raised, the substantive part that lies untouched and conveniently concealed in the loudness of his call.

In another instance, the same naive souls will be terrified by the media circus following an attack on Hamid Mir. They would be pulled in opposite directions by their duty to free expression and their inability to stomach anything in excess. Ultimately, they would be confronted with the search for the question basic to the occurrence: who carried out the attack and who was behind it?

Imran Khan’s quest for proving that the election in 2013 was rigged has its own basics and its own loud theories which threaten to take the attention away from the original quest. Everyone is so keen to remind the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief about the timing of his protest movement – that he had either left it far too late or was guilty of synchronising his campaign to complement and be complemented by the military establishment’s mood.

Next, Imran is criticised, even made fun of, for his confused signals on the issue. He is deemed to have more than earned his boos with his inconsistent statements betraying his immaturity as a politician and he is taken to the cleaners over his inability to as yet come up with a final list of those he holds responsible for the vote fraud. He is dubbed as an irresponsible childish player as the modern version of the doctrine of necessity is invoked.

The basic fact remains: were there problems with the conduct of the election? Imran Khan has been saying all along that there were and others have selectively concurred with his assertion.

The opposition leader in the National Assembly, Khursheed Shah, even agrees with Imran’s demand that those sitting on the Election Commission should quit after aspersions have been cast on their roles. That should leave the people — in and outside the fold of the PTI — with a desire to search and find out what the problems with the election that have led to such drastic demand were.

The PTI may have its own, even if dark and opportunistic, motives for raising this protest but if these are thought generally to disqualify the party from seeking redress, the principle doesn’t change even if you and I don’t like Imran Khan: It is always in the interest of people to get a picture as close to reality as possible.

There are some issues also with how the PTI’s show on May 11 was measured on the success scale. It was not uncommonly billed as a show of solidarity with the military establishment at a time when it had just been through a rough stretch in its ties with the elected government and was in the middle of a stand-off with a powerful media group. Not only did Imran target the PML-N government he also took on the media group, thereby appearing to be putting his weight behind the same people he has often been accused of taking his lines from.

In the context, to say that his May 11 rally was a failure would amount to disregarding the warning Imran and the Pakistan Awami Tehreek and Jamaat-i-Islami — which held rallies the same day to coincide with the PTI’s show — were able to send across. The purpose was to display the respective strengths of all these three parties and illustrate not so abstractly the combined numbers these three were capable of bringing to the streets. The objective was achieved.

It can be said the speech or the non-speech at the end of the PTI rally on May 11 was incidental and not the main course, even if the speech part could have been performed better. Imran Khan and those who took the dais before him last Sunday in Islamabad could have given those who had turned up at the venue a little more to be upbeat about. None of them appeared to even attempt that and they all sounded a bit hollow.

Public speaking is not the PTI’s strong point, but it seems that even someone as brash and bold as Sheikh Rashid of his own Awami Muslim League is more inclined to prosper in television studios now in comparison to addressing a crowd from stage. He sounded so unlike his old self in his dismissal of the PML-N government, like a labourer who is asked to find fault with a memorial he has helped build over time.

Imran Khan, in his turn, should have concentrated on the ‘evidence of rigging’ that has come to the surface in the more recent past to back the accusation he and many others first made in May 2013. He did mention a Lahore constituency and the alleged bogus votes cast there and just how lengthy and costly it was to pursue a case of alleged poll rigging. That was comparatively a more powerful portion of his address and the point where he could have looked for his climax.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2014

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