Just four days before the ongoing joint sitting of parliament, PTI chief Imran Khan announced that he would be attending the session. Then, on Monday, he skipped the All-Parties Conference on Kashmir, sending Shah Mehmood Qureshi to deputise for him while he took a short vacation. A day later he said his party would boycott the joint setting since Nawaz Sharif was using the Kashmir issue to distract from the Panama Papers scandal and that he did not consider him a legitimate leader. Then he once again denied legitimacy to the whole parliament. And because of what? Because its members had the audacity to call a session to show symbolic unity on certain matters of national importance when the country has been threatened with aggression as part of the Indian efforts to divert attention from Kashmir? Even for a man as mercurial and capricious as Imran, this was a curious U-turn. To do a 180-degree shift in a matter of days will inevitably lead to the conclusion that Imran may not be the sole master of his mind and action. Qureshi and other senior leaders who were reportedly in favour of attending parliament were not able to persuade Imran to change his mind.
No matter what political differences we have, they should be put aside when it comes to matters of national security and foreign aggression. Indeed, Qureshi had said as much after the Kashmir APC. Imran has handed a huge propaganda victory to the Indians, who portrayed the absence of the country’s third-largest party from parliament as a sign of our disunity. Foreign aggression and issues like self-determination for the people of Kashmir are matters that need to transcend partisan politics. Imran Khan’s myopic focus on attaining power for himself has damaged the country and the polity before. This time, even his pretension to democratic means has been shunned aside. He does not want to accept any due process. Instead, he is threatening to use violent means, and institutions may be targeted again. Imran is now bent on creating tragedy to achieve his political ends. And he is no revolutionary. He has neither the intelligence nor the vision nor the character nor the intention required. He is a fragment of the status quo whose ego is driving him towards a dangerous path. This is no indication of personal bravery either, because it puts him at no risk. It is the country and its polity that is threatened with chaos and its dreaded consequences which, Imran Khan hopes, will elevate him to power. Others – more clever characters than Imran – have done this before in our history and the country is still paying a price. It is a tragedy that Imran, who could once promise something different, has chosen to lead his party down this old abyss.