IMRAN Khan says he didn’t quite get what a group of people outside the Army Public School in Peshawar were protesting about just as he arrived there on Tuesday. That had to be a statement coming from a politician playing innocent at the risk of appearing naïve, even aloof to the reality.

For someone known for assiduously concentrating on a single cause for long periods of time when he has wanted to, the PTI chief should not have found it too difficult to understand what the parents of the children killed at the school last month, and their co-protesters were shouting for. They were basically demanding commitment and focus, chastened by a sad tradition where the most tragic incidents are forgotten with the passage of time.

The focus comes from a lot of things. All these expressions of resolve may have some value but what is common between Imran Khan and a lot of other politicians in Pakistan is that they are unable to maintain physical proximity with the affected people in the wake of an unfortunate, especially terror-related, incident.

Circumstances have forced the PTI chief to not flaunt his mantra founded on the ideal of rehabilitating and co-opting the militants.

The politicians have collected on one platform to denounce terrorism. They have pledged their support to the military to spearhead the counter-offensive. Not too many have felt the urge or been able to reach out to the families shattered by the loss of their children in the devastating school attack.

What some politicians have done is that they have tried to seek convenient cover for their absence from the grieving houses in Peshawar in the readymade explanation that must blame the military for everything the politicians are unable to achieve or manage. That’s a valid argument in so many situations but whereas there has been some ‘advice’ to the politicians asking them to stay away from the soft launch of the Army Public School in Peshawar on Monday, a most relevant question is: who and what had prevented the top leadership of the PTI and other parties from going to the parents of the students killed in the attack?

These parents were in desperate need of a word of solace and a sense of togetherness that only personal contact can bring. The politicians who failed to extend these families the personal reassurance in a moment as dire as this can only be expected to continue practising a brand that requires passing on the sensitive and the more demanding tasks to others.

The protesters that came in Imran Khan’s way in Peshawar were probably angry at the ‘diversions’ that have been there since the Dec 16 catastrophe. There was a woman, identified as the mother of a boy who lost his life in the school tragedy, who was there to confront Imran, upset that he had chosen to get married at a time when so many parents were in mourning.

Logical commentary followed. Those who had been covering the PTI’s popular advance in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were quick to point out the contrast between this confrontation and the receptions Imran has been getting in the past. There was little mention of the ceremony and glamour the media had imparted on the Imran-Reham wedding. Was not it the media that turned it into a grand event, projecting the ‘good news’ that according to so many worthy commentators was so needed to lift the gloom?

The media did blow it out of proportion and should be one of the accused in the list of the Peshawar protesters. This is a debate that has to take place but separately from an evaluation of the politics of the PTI, the party’s compulsions and its recent compromises. One reason why Imran Khan did not get the substance in the protest could be because he was in unfamiliar territory. The condemnation of the Peshawar tragedy and his subsequent positioning by this side of the war on terror marks a new phase in his politics.

Not every demonstration that is held in the street can be defined as protest. In many cases it is a cry of anguish. It is a scream born of helplessness. A protest, to the contrary, is aimed at carrying a demand across to those who can, or should, provide the means of redress. There has to be some positive coming out of it after the message has been conveyed by the protesters. On this scale Imran Khan and his PTI have long considered themselves to be the victims of a system that promotes apathy and neglect. They think of themselves as those who have been long denied redress of a genuine grievance.

On their turn, all politicians in the country do from time to time apply for a place on the victims’ list. Imran Khan distinguishes himself from a Sharif or a Zardari in that he has been demanding a change of system, and not just its reform. More significantly in the current context, he has been the most vocal and apparently the most committed among these mainstream politicians wanting synthesis between the angry brethren — the militants — and the rest of Pakistan.

Circumstances have now forced the PTI chief to not flaunt his mantra founded on the ideal of rehabilitating and co-opting the militants. The protest or the cry of anguish that greeted him in Peshawar earlier this week could be interpreted as a brute reminder about the ‘failure’ of his proposed solution to the biggest ill this country is afflicted with. The school tragedy that forced the PTI to fix its position has shaken the very foundation upon which the party had built its public appeal: that of a moderate force out to reconcile the two Pakistans at odds which other — one angry and the other held hostage — for peace and security of the people in this country.

Imran Khan is unlikely to be able to sell his dream compromise to Pakistanis, for the time being at least. That severely limits his choices in politics. The most viable option for him would be to go on pressing with his — quite popular — election rigging allegations in this latest phase in his politics.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2015

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