PML-U
You know your legal team is shabby when you are accused of wasting the court’s time with “tales from the Arabian Nights” despite it being the other side that has literally brought in an Arab prince in the mix at the court.
No, Imran Khan didn’t really have his act together. It was the same situation as the judicial commission that had been set up to investigate the rigging of the 2013 elections. Having surrounded himself by yes-men, the party chairman and his merry men are at odds whenever they actually go over to independent adjudicators who seek legally valid evidence for claims.
The way the PTI’s someone-told-me brand of proof fell flat in the rigging commission, it also didn’t quite hold up in the Panama case. Giving the court a slew of newspaper articles to go through was the final straw on the camel’s back that prompted one of the Justices to dress down Hamid Khan, the PTI’s then counsel in the case.
However disastrous the case might have been, the Panama papers defined the year for Imran Khan. It gave him a new lease on life, anything that could take his mind off the tedium of actually delivering in the one province his party was elected in.
Imran Khan’s problem is the style of politics that his followers have come to expect. When he displays maturity, like calling off his plan of a “lockdown” in Islamabad because the court had finally caved in to the demand of setting up a judicial commission on the Panama papers, there was an air of anger and betrayal in his rank-and-file; more file than rank, though.
The party’s supporters are slowly and gradually lapping up the branding of a “Master of U-turn” that the PML-N has crafted about him. Imran Khan, otherwise a teflon politician, with nothing sticking to him, has the U-turn tag firmly attached to him now. This year’s subsequent return to the parliament (“won’t ever go to this parliament till Nawaz resigns”) has further cemented that image now.
Though one can never underestimate the zeal of the supporters of the PTI, the events of 2016 have made sure that all lofty announcements by Imran Khan are going to be taken with a pinch of salt by the faithful in the future.
