File photo of Imran Khan
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has asked his party’s lawmakers to shutter the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies in a bid to force the country into fresh elections, which he believes his party is sure to win. One can’t say how reliable his wisdom is, but Defense Minister Khawaja Asif of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) has claimed that Punjab Chief Minister Parvez Elahi “will abandon former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan.” He added more words of wisdom, recalling that Khan used to call Elahi the “biggest criminal of Punjab” and “today this incident [Wazirabad shooting] has happened under the same biggest criminal.” Consoling himself about what is apparent to many people—an electoral victory for the PTI—Asif added that Khan’s long march had actually turned into a “short march.”
It is likely—but by no means certain—that Punjab will return the PTI to power, regardless of how objectively bad its rule has been in the province under initially the rather low-IQ Usman Buzdar and now Parvez Elahi. In less than four years of Buzdar’s rule, the province has seen 28 higher-education department secretaries; 10 primary and secondary secretaries; and eight specialized health secretaries. In addition, there have been six chief secretaries and nine police chiefs. In the last eight months, no bureaucrat or police officer worth his salt has sought the top positions; most preferring long leaves because every transfer and posting for important slots is reportedly made on the recommendations of the PTI and PMLQ legislators and directly handled by the chief minister’s office.
Punjab comprises nearly half the country’s population, and what happens here shapes what happens in the rest of Pakistan. What the PTI and PMLQ together have done to the province’s civil servants is quite disenchanting. Under a cloud of uncertainty, provincial decision-making has gone on leave and the results of this process will not take long in manifesting. Imran Khan may be worshipped by the masses across Pakistan but the country has to be routinely run on the basis of a civil service working efficiently. Public representatives who sit in the assemblies in Punjab and KP have to think hard before they obey Khan and hand over their resignations. They know that the state of Pakistan is going to undergo an upheaval that may mar its ability to get out of the economic crisis it finds itself in and that the masses, today under the spell of Khan’s personality, may change their mind as they succumb to further hardship. What is coming to Pakistan is a regional crisis that many of its neighboring states are trying very hard to avoid in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During his rule, Khan offended most of the prospective “helpers” of Pakistan, and regardless of his popularity, seems least able to bring relief as his charisma becomes increasingly vulnerable to economic shock.