Taped

It appears that, for all his talk of a ‘new’ Pakistan and a new political culture, Imran Khan has a lot to improve. The leaked telephonic conversation between him and PTI leader Dr Arif Alvi will makes many question a man who has built his political career on the idea that he is a straightforward, dedicated politician different from the others on the national scene. The embarrassing conversation leaked to the media has Imran using abusive language he has become known for, directed against the prime minister of the country. Imran, on being informed by Dr Alvi last year during the PTI’s prolonged sit-in in Islamabad that the PTV headquarters had been violently broken into, is heard saying ‘this is good’. He also expresses the hope that this will lead the prime minister to resign and abuses him as he does so. The remarks make it plain that Imran’s insistent denials that his party workers had nothing to do with the attack on PTV, which resulted in transmissions being disrupted and considerable damage caused to equipment, were in stark contrast to the facts.
Where, we must ask, is the new culture that Imran has said he wishes to introduce in politics? Basic common sense and maturity are qualities any politician requires and there is nothing that can exempt Imran from these traits. The tone we hear in the conversation from Dr Alvi, a man of considerable personal standing, indicates too that the sycophancy that is the curse of our political culture has invaded the PTI too. Imran appears to run the party like a kind of demigod. This is an unhealthy tendency that opportunistic sycophancy can only worsen. The PTI has made only feeble attempts to explain the leaked conversation. Its stance that it is unethical to tape such matters holds little moral weight given that the party voiced no objections when Saulat Mirza’s video-taped confession was leaked and took no time in unleashing an attack on Altaf Hussain and his party. Dr Alvi’s stance that the audio recording was somehow tampered with is also not believable given his strange notion that words have been placed out of context. This does not appear to be the case when one hears the tape. Imran Khan, unable to defend what becomes obvious in the tape, tried nonsensically to attack Altaf Hussain and the MQM. Altaf has rightly objected to that and – people are not fools either. Now that Imran is apparently getting ready to fill the vacuum he hopes will be created in Karachi as he sees the MQM retreating, he needs instead to sit back and reflect on his own politics and the direction it has been taking.