IMRAN Khan’s re-entry into the orbit of mainstream Pakistani politics, after several unsuccessful attempts to launch himself with the aid of a variety of unreliable boosters appeared to have succeeded last month when he held a rally in Lahore.

However, soon after, the mission control started reporting engine trouble arising from a corrosive mixture of fuels used in the flight.

While Mr Khan did not need a massive push to get off the ground from a certain quarter which has often found him a convenient tool for its own agenda and that he realised is counterproductive, it is pathetic that he appeared to yield to this temptation in his speech at Minto Park.

The political vacuum created by the lust-for-power driven ‘system’ in which all major political parties have a stake, was enough for him to take a position of pre-eminence, provided he chose to define his agenda more precisely and extended his reach to beyond the narrow constituency of the urban middle classes.

For this he needed to not merely pick the winners from among the existing political classes, but also to create a vibrant grass-roots base that he seems not to be too interested in.

Although the main focus of his Lahore conclave was to win over the pro-Nawaz Sharif vote in Lahore and Punjab, Mr Khan aimed his first salvo at Mr Zardari by raising the spectre of what has now blown into memogate and which has brought into sharp relief the cracks in the civil-military relationship.

While few at that time noticed his letting the cat out of the bag, recent speculations on his being privy to the information on the creator of the infamous document well ahead of the news-gathering curve that the media was tracking, have raised suspicions about his credentials.

It may also put in jeopardy his ambitious mission to ascend to the heights of political power by becoming a serious third contender in the game of musical chairs in Pakistani politics.

Nevertheless, Mr Khan’s triumphal march into competitive politics late last month in the hallowed Minar-i-Pakistan grounds, one of the most coveted places for holding public rallies in Pakistan, was no doubt a significant, if not game-changing, event in Pakistani politics.

If nothing, its success demonstrated that he has managed to surround himself with youthful people gifted with dedication, organisational ability, creativity and motivation, which were hardly in evidence in the political assemblages of his rivals.

The four public meetings held recently — two in Lahore and one each in Karachi and Faisalabad — marking the beginning of the unofficial election season provide interesting contrasts.

The differences in the class composition of the audiences present and pitched by the three parties are quite striking. While Imran Khan’s rally consisted of a large number of upper middle-class urbanites, many driving up in SUVs and swank new cars and stylish clothes, the PML-N’s rally at Bhatti Chowk and Dhobi Ghat were of a more run-of-the-mill and humdrum variety peopled by small businessmen, shopkeepers and other elements of the upper middle class.

The MQM’s traditional base of the lower middle class has been in recent years strengthened by its encroachment of upper middle class areas that had shunned it previously. These differences are to some extent embedded in the political and economic agenda and appeal of the various competing political parties.

Despite all the hullabaloo recently on the rising significance of the middle class, however loosely defined, indications are that it still constitutes no more than 20-25 per cent of the population, with the large majority eking out a difficult existence and the rest constituting the rich elite.

All the major political parties, with the possible exception of the PPP, are depending on the votes and allegiance of the middle-cum-rich segment that actively participates in elections. Imran Khan’s edge lies in wooing a segment of the newly emerging middle class, which holds a cynical view of traditional politicians and is easily swayed by calls for eliminating corruption without undertaking painful social and economic reforms that would hurt it in the first place.

It is foolhardy to expect him to lead an Arab Spring-like mass insurrection against the status quo that he and his youthful and well-educated followers are veritably a part and product of. To what extent the unravelling of the memogate scandal and Mr Khan’s perceived proximity to the military will damage his electoral prospects remains to be seen.

None of the present political parties is, however, capable of carrying out a radical agenda which would primarily benefit the bottom two-thirds of the population.

With the continued deterioration in the economic and law and order situation in the country, which is making it impossible to live in security and without deprivation, it is not hard to imagine that the threshold for the end of the patience of the majority of the people will soon be reached, making it inevitable for people to resort to desperate means for their survival.

Hope alone — however eloquently packaged in rhetoric — is unlikely to fill the empty bellies of people groaning under poverty. The diversionary games of power-sharing presently being played among the elite — such as memogate, accountability and corruption, asset declaration and the MFN — are becoming increasingly irrelevant debates for the majority of the people, whose problems remain unaddressed.

The writer is a former professor of economics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. smnaseem@gmail.com