Ciphers you can’t decipher

Even if you are totally bowled over by the endless reverberations of what had happened on May 9, you still need to have patience to bear with this rising tempo of political tension and dark apprehensions about the eventual outcome of the moves that are now being initiated.

One task for those who feel concerned about the national state of affairs is to assess the significance of the cipher issue that burst out on Wednesday in a rather dramatic fashion. Yes, we would frequently talk about Imran Khan’s initial stratagem to blame the United States for his ouster from power through a vote of no confidence.

He had waved that cipher – a piece of paper that he pulled out of his pocket – in a public meeting in March last year as some kind of an evidence of a conspiracy that was hatched against him. This was certainly a very serious matter, accusing the superpower of plotting a regime change in the sovereign state of Pakistan.

But serious matters are not what Imran Khan is able to comprehend. And true to his nature, he took a U-turn and even sought America’s favours so that he could return to the throne. However, the cipher story just remained a part of the Imran Khan saga. There were audio clips to show that Imran Khan had decided to ‘play’ with it to build a narrative.

On Wednesday, that cipher that the PTI leader had decided to play with was brought back to life with the revelation that the ex-principal secretary of the former prime minister had supposedly recorded a statement under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in which he accused his former boss of using a cipher from Pakistan’s mission in the United States to gain political mileage and, more meaningfully, to build an anti-establishment narrative.

This was a bombshell, considering the circumstances in which this confession was made public. There was some mystification about its potential uses in the context of putting Imran Khan in the dock to respond to a number of extremely serious charges. However, this entire episode itself is unfolding as a cipher – something secret written in a coded language.

It so happened that Azam Khan, who was seen as the power behind the then prime minister Imran Khan, had gone missing on June 15 and a case was registered by the Islamabad police. He has now returned home and there are explanations that he was staying with a friend – of his own will.

Anyhow, a lot more attention is to be paid to what this confession can entail. Already, high functionaries of the government, the life of which is to be counted in days, are projecting very scary scenarios. But it is not easy to read the messages that are in circulation. In a sense, they may have hidden meanings of the kind that a cipher would contain.

One is reminded of that image of Imran Khan with a folded paper in his hand and saying something he had not actually intended to say. What I mean is that in the audio leak, he was heard telling his close associates that America’s name was not at all to be mentioned. But it was his own slip of the tongue when he named the country in his impassioned speech. Take this as another little sign of how flippant he is in his conduct.

On the face of it, this cipher issue is becoming the final trap for Imran Khan and the charges he is likely to face are the most serious. This is not to say that the PTI leader was not already in deep trouble, with a number of cases now moving more resolutely in various courts. The impression that the higher judiciary was handling Imran Khan with kid gloves is slowly beginning to wear off.

As I suggested at the outset, there is a rush of developments at this time across the entire national spectrum, leaving us emotionally exhausted. In less than a month, the National Assembly will complete its term and elections will have to be held within 60 or 90 days, depending on whether it is dissolved just a few days before its expiry date. Caretakers have to be nominated at the federal and provincial levels. Apart from an uncertainty about how the forces in the political arena would be arranged, strong doubts linger that the elections may be put off for a long period.

Then, there is the economy, watching us, as a poet might say, like a cat would watch a mouse. Economists who have read the IMF report on Pakistan are not smiling. Consider also the alarming increase in terror attacks by the TTP and its affiliates, bearing witness to the folly of pampering and patronizing the Taliban and the Jihadi elements in the past.

Socially, Pakistan is unquestionably down in the dumps. Some reports on child sexual abuse are horrendous. Deviant behaviour, in all its lethal forms, is rising. Decades of degradation in the education and health sectors are coming home to roost. One measure of how apathetic we have become is that a boy killing his three sisters, allegedly under the influence of a PUBG game, has not prompted any visible outrage in any segment of society.

With all this, the consequences of May 9 – or, in other words, the fate of Imran Khan and his party – remain at the centre of stage. There are reasons why this issue is of supreme importance for the political future of this country. But how should this crisis be resolved is becoming problematic.

However, the cipher case has suddenly accelerated the pace of events. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has issued a notice to Imran Khan, asking him to appear before the bureau on July 25. Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah has said that the former prime minister can be arrested in the process of the FIA inquiry. Is this, then, the last over of the match?

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at:

ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com