IMRAN Khan has completed an embarrassing trek back to the National Assembly. He stands yet again exposed for his twists and turns — his habitual U-turns, as the PML-N members call it. All his vows about meeting his one-point agenda, that of dislodging Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, have come to naught.

There are questions which Mr Khan would be hard-pressed to answer satisfactorily and which invariably lead to the conclusion that he would have been far better off pressing on in the streets than he will be arguing it out in parliament from now on.

After he got his judicial commission, shouldn’t he have waited for an inquiry by the commission before retracing his steps to parliament? Before that, whose idea was it to prefer the streets over the assemblies in the first place? Couldn’t the street protest be best complemented by a drive inside parliament for a judicial commission and reforms of the Election Commission? And the ultimate question, as always, is the one that seeks to place Imran Khan and his party in the safe and secure company of the powerful kingmakers who are widely believed to be making the decisions for the PTI chief.

As in the past, in the case of the PTI, its leaders, and in the case of other parties and other leaders, this is yet another opportunity for groups to honourably dissociate themselves from the campaign. This is surely not the Imran Khan that many had vowed to stand behind. This is some other politician willing to do whatever it had taken Benazir Bhutto or a Nawaz Sharif to be able to push his credentials as a replacement for the Bhutto-Sharif system.

The PTI’s return to the assemblies of course offers yet another opportunity for re-evaluating Imran Khan’s development as a politician in comparison with the standard Pakistani version of a party leader. Much of what the exercise helps discover will be ‘negative’ given the original scale he was weighed on by some remaining idealists in this country of 200 million.

The PTI’s return to the assemblies of course offers yet another opportunity for re-evaluating Imran Khan’s development as a politician.

Most damaging of all, he is today considered to be an individual who has been chastened and chiselled by experience — the result showing him to be far more adept at not being embarrassed by the frequent contradictions in his approach.

No more does he wipe the cold perspiration off his brow as he prepares for a somersault. No longer does his downward gaze give him away just as he is making a departure from an earlier principle. He is not embarrassed by a leaked tape and uncharacteristically his face does not change colour as a minister unleashes a vicious volley to greet him upon his return to the National Assembly. The innocence has gone, and then it has gone a few more times. The leader is today able to look directly into the camera and say what he has to without appearing to be sorry about his change of mind.

These are all, we tell ourselves, bad signs that turn a reform-minded Imran Khan into the usual Pakistani leader of a political party. His cover has been blown and he is as much a representative of the old Pakistan that he set off to recreate, worthy of all the jibes that he attracts, even from long-time friends and sympathisers in the media.

They would have been inclined to write Imran Khan off as a renegade with a lost cause had it not been for the PML-N narrative that casts the PTI rival in a very promising role that offers immense possibilities of growth.

Khawaja Asif has finally been moved to interject with his not-altogether unfamiliar yet not-too-frequent emotional outburst. Many say the origins of his frustration lay in his Sialkot constituency far away from the site of the PTI dharna, indicating just how deep the PTI threat is. But whatever his reasons, Khawaja Sahib is unable to apply the lessons he should have learnt over all these years in politics and he is unable to ignore the PTI retreat to parliament as fait accompli.

At other forums, Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid remains as belligerent as ever in his dismissal of everything that has anything to do with Imran Khan.

As much as Mr Khan’s own advances deep into the country — inside Karachi and interior Sindh most recently — it is the PML-N responses as defender-in-chief of the system that force quick reviews of how the country’s politics are seen at this moment. For instance, how would people generally look at the PTI return to the assemblies in the context of the party’s continued insistence that it can force a snap poll in the current year?

For many, the resumption in the assemblies would be a sign that the PTI is now preparing for the long haul, maybe anticipating a not-too-favourable verdict from the judicial commission that has just begun its work. It would amount to silent acceptance of the ‘fact’ that these assemblies were in no immediate danger of being dissolved or otherwise the party could have been well advised to spend ‘the few months leading up to the election’ in the streets and in protest mode.

The PML-N stalwarts do not appear to think so. This does not appear to be the usual ridiculing of the defeated by the victors. These are reactions that can be attributed to a group’s fears of imminent danger. These are reactions that tally with rumours about the mood in the government’s camp and with popular perceptions about it being only a matter of time before Imran Khan replaces Mian Nawaz Sharif as ‘everyone’s’ favourite for running this country.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2015

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