Whichever candidate does finally emerge as the victor in the by-elections for NA-246 (Karachi), it is clear that the moral victory is already that of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. Even if his candidate Imran Ismail does not secure a majority, the PTI will have succeeded not so much by the number of votes cast in its favour but by those hurled against the MQM.

With a daring that matched Mr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s challenge to the complacent politico-military elite in the 1970 elections, Imran Khan has penetrated the MQM’s domain. Six months ago, such a foray into the Land of Oz would have been dangerous, almost unthinkable.

He knew the risk he was taking. A single bullet separated a Nobel Prize winner from oblivion; a single bullet separated innocent victims like Masood Hamid from life. The threats confronting Imran Khan were real; they were multiple; their objective, singular. It was to dam his tsunami for change.

Read: Karachi's NA-246 by-poll: A three-way contest

For the PM, Xi Jinping’s visit couldn’t have come at a better time.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, that taken at the flood …” Shakespeare had once written. Had he been writing today, he would have added: a flood that ‘‘cannot be stemmed by vindictive power outages’. Earlier, Imran Khan would have shouted his remonstrance from a container top. His newer political maturity revealed itself when he sat with an almost bemused reaction at the pettiness of his opponents.

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It would be ungracious not to acknowledge that perhaps one reason for his new found gravitas is the emergence on the platform of his new wife Reham Khan. Well-groomed, poised, articulate, Mrs Reham Khan (unlike her predecessor) is naturally and comfortably Pakistani.

Her identity does not hang on her like some outfit designed by Rizwan Beyg.

In one sense, she is close in temperament to Mrs Kulsum Nawaz, consort of the prime minister. Mrs Nawaz, better educated than her husband, wisely never allows herself to overshadow him. She has learned to walk in his footsteps, to never aspire to step into his shoes.

Mr and Mrs Khan working the crowd together in NA-246 exhibited all the adhesion of a formidable team. By contrast, the leadership of the PPP appears to be in dynastic disarray.

A public reconciliation in Dubai between Asif Zardari and his co-chairperson Bilawal Bhutto filled one morning’s headlines.

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It could not, however, paper over the widening schism, the deepening resentments that are developing between an experienced satiated father and his impatient hungry son. Some of us may yet live to see an electoral contest between a Bhutto and a Zardari, just as India has witnessed duels between the Gandhis (Sonia/Rahul) and the Gandhis (Maneka/Varun).

For Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the visit this week of the Chinese President Xi Jingping could not have come at a better time. Battered by parliamentary criticism which he regards as an administrative aberration rather than a mirror of the public’s mood against Pakistan’s involvement in the Saudi-Yemen conflict, Mr Sharif needs the reassurance that such state visits provide.

President Xi Jingping’s visit is an interesting reversal of the attitude of former Chinese rulers. Dr Henry Kissinger writes in his book World Order that when in 1792 Lord Sir George Macartney was sent by King George III to open trade negotiations with the Chinese, the emperor, Chi’en Lung, loftily dismissed the British delegation, remarking: “As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things.” Chi’en Lung reminded his British counterpart of the “throne’s principle to ‘treat strangers from afar with indulgence’, and to exercise a pacifying control over barbarian tribes, the world over”.

Today, over 200 years later, it is precisely because the Chinese “possess all things” that they can afford to share their surplus the world over and to treat “with indulgence” countries like Pakistan — the friendliest of strangers, and the strangest of friends.

President Xi Jingping has brought a cornucopia overflowing with aid and loans, tied as most Chinese offerings are with the most silken of strings.

The scale — $45 billion worth — bears no relationship to Pakistan’s economy. Some cynics have suggested that it might have been more cost-effective for the Chinese to have bought Pakistan outright.

This Chinese munificence certainly outshines the gilt largesse of the $1.5bn (albeit in cash) given by the Saudis, presumably to pay for the $1bn worth of arms the United States has suddenly offered to supply. That Pakistan should have accepted both is not surprising. Our governments accept anything at the drop of a scruple.

The PML-N government has begun to imitate what Dr Kissinger defined as “the [Saudi] kingdom’s strategy of principled ambiguity”. Such ambiguity is arguable in foreign relations. It is inexplicable in domestic politics, especially when another party will have to implement a predecessor’s commitments and 180 million of us pay for them.

The writer is an author and art historian.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2015

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