The art of the U-turn

If there is one statement or narrative that could win an award for the number of about-turns and U-turns, the PTI’s ‘foreign conspiracy’ would surely be a contestant. Living up to the expected, PTI Chairman Imran Khan has now taken yet another U-turn on his ‘US conspiracy behind regime change operation’ narrative – an idea that was always seen as rather unlikely by more sober purveyors of the news but which had resonated deeply with PTI supporters. In a recent interview with Voice of America (VOA), when the interviewer asked Imran Khan about his narrative that the US had conspired with his political opponents to remove him from office and what would happen to Pakistan’s relations with the US were he to return to power, the former prime minister said that international relationships should not be based on personal egos but the interests of the people of the country and that having good ties with the US was important for Pakistan. And then the clincher: that he ‘now’ believed that it wasn’t the US that asked Pakistan [to oust him] but in fact former COAS Gen Bajwa who had told the Americans that Imran was anti-US, thereby – per Imran Khan – ‘exporting’ the regime change plan from here to the US.

This may just be the most blatant change in rhetoric yet from the PTI, which had used Imran’s ‘Absolutely Not’ phrase to whip up unprecedented frenzy against the alleged American plot to oust him. Imran’s insistence that the US had brought about a change in government in Pakistan had created huge waves in diplomatic circles. This narrative had also led to tensions between two countries and gone on to also make his opponents easy targets of his supporters’ ire. The PTI had tried to use it to invoke Article 5 against those parliamentarians who had brought forth the vote of no-confidence and accused the then opposition members of ‘disloyalty’ to the state for being part of a said ‘conspiracy’ against the PTI government.

As it were, it seems now the narrative stands changed – shifting political compulsions making it perhaps imperative for the PTI to shift the goalpost to a more local centre of blame: the retired COAS. It may escape the notice of more ardent supporters but Imran and the PTI had not named the general in their original narrative. Naysayers can continue to point at the very glaring loopholes and about-turns in the PTI’s changing conspiracy narrative but the one thing the party has honed to perfection is the art of repeating something so often that it becomes a near-absolute truth – at least for its supporters. Now that the PTI chairman has decided it is time to move on from the anti-US narrative, one may be sure that this is what his supporters will do as well. However, much of the foreign policy damage has had to be cleaned up by the PDM government. It may be too much to expect an apology for placing Pakistan’s foreign policy in such a sensitive position, but one hopes some lessons may be drawn from this. Unfortunately, it may be that the only lesson that may be sourced is that U-turns work very well for Imran Khan and his party, regardless of what cost they come at.