IMRAN Khan, chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, has warned that that the government would pay a high price if it declares him a proclaimed offender. He also termed his arrest warrant as a ‘conspiracy’ against democracy, adding it showed the real faces of the rulers.

This is just another vivid proof that neither does Mr Khan want democracy nor does he understand what it is.

By saying that the government would pay a price by declaring him an offender, he showed he did not know that it was the judiciary that called him a proclaimed offender and that too on good reasons.

Mr Khan should know that the government and the judiciary are two different things. And why would a warrant against him be a ‘conspiracy’ against democracy?

Issuing a warrant when there is initial proof for an offence that has to be further investigated is very much in accordance with democracy and law. Or does Mr Khan think he is so special that the laws don’t apply to him? What kind of democracy would that be?

ZAB was twice arrested, first during Ayub Khan’s rule under MPO order and second in 1977-78 after the imposition of martial law, but both times when an officer of the police went to arrest him, he did not resist, rather he asked for a little time to pack his essential requirements in a bag and submitted himself before the law.

Do Mr Khan’s collegues in the PTI know this facet of democracy and the rule of law? It is uncertain that Mr Khan and his party can bring any ‘change’ that would matter; they are aiming at replacing one set of elite with another. But that would only solve Mr Khan’s problem, not the one of Pakistan.

Ali Ashraf Khan

Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 22th , 2014