Not too far

Imran Khan’s speech to a crowd in the Islamabad Parade Ground was predictable as usual. Instead of really accepting the logic of the SC’s decision to create a JIT to look into the Sharif family’s financial affairs, Khan has decided to take to the streets to repeat his one-point agenda to force the prime minister to resign. Over the last four years, using this various issues, Imran has had little else to say. When he runs out of steam he has an ability to produce new stories without substantiation. Some have seen it as his ability to turn a winning position into a problematic one. At the start of this latest movement to dislodge the PML-N government, he should have been operating from a position of strength given that the prime minister had just had his honesty questioned by the SC. Imran’s rally, in accordance with his own strategy, should have made, without complications, the case that Nawaz Sharif’s dissembling on the London flats made him unfit to serve in office. Instead, it was also Khan’s own credibility that was on trial as he had to defend his allegations of the Rs10b bribe the Sharifs, according to him, offered him to keep silent on the Panama issue.        This time, like on all other such occasions, Khan has promised more of a show inside the court if the PML-N follows through its proclaimed intention of brining a libel case against him.  Imran also claimed the reason he wasn’t revealing the identity of the man who made the offer on the behalf of the Sharifs is that the Sharif family would destroy him. This makes little sense. If, as the PTI claims, the person was a close personal friend of Shahbaz Sharif and had been specifically tasked with offering a bribe to Imran, why then would they retaliate against him just because Imran revealed the name?

The rest of the speech was the kind of Imran Khan boiler-plate we have become so familiar with.    Despite the recent Supreme Court exhortation not to politicize the Panama Papers judgment, Imran has continued to do what was expected of him. The dissenting notes by two judges are being presented as the real judgment and, as a result, not very subtle insinuations have now begun to be cast on the other judges. At the very least, all this may be seen as part of a simple calculus: elections are coming to Pakistan. If not “within months” – as Imran and the rest of the opposition may be hoping – then almost a year to this date. Why miss an opportunity to influence public opinion in the lead-up to the elections? The trouble is that subjecting the Panama Papers to political exploitation in this manner will not lead to any real chance of seriously solving the problem of corruption in the country. Imran’s call for a ‘boycott’ of Nawaz Sharif mirrors the previous failed attempt at starting ‘civil disobedience’. Turning institutions of learning and the workplaces into dens of political chanting may not have the effect Imran intends. This is now at least the fourth time Imran has launched a movement to overthrow the government in the last five years and he should not forget that there is such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. The crowd in Islamabad may have been sizable, yet it lacked the enthusiasm and verve of previous efforts. Imran now moves on to Karachi,   Nowshera      and Sialkot, where he can be expected to repeat the same message. He seems to be hoping that a show of strength will put pressure on the JIT to rule against Nawaz. But, as always, there is a danger that Imran will once again go too far.