It was a welcome move on the part of Prime Minister Imran Khan to offer an opportunity to people to seek answers from him on telephone about his performance during an exercise spread over an hour and a half, widely televised on Pakistani channels. The programme also provided an opportunity to the PM to enumerate what he considers his lifetime achievements: a successful cricket career which turned him into a glamorous figure; the establishment of a state of art cancer hospital that provides free treatment to those unable to pay for the costly treatment; and finally breaking the hold of the dynastic politics represented by the PML(N) and the PPP, and leading the PTI to power.
Some of the questions, claimed Mr Khan, had really amazed him. Why should everybody be expecting that his government would set things right within a short time? After all, he didn’t carry a wizard’s wand and people should know that everybody lives happily ever after only in fairy tales. But has Mr Khan forgotten that he had himself promised that once the PTI was in power it would end corruption in 19 days and terrorism in 90 days? Does he remember that the PTI had announced a hundred days programme and undertaken to provide 10 million jobs and five million homes? How many would have voted for his party if told before elections that with him as PM people would have to display patience and wait for good times and that peace comes to one only in the grave?
Mr Khan wants to rule like an all-powerful US President who is exhaustively briefed about future challenges months before taking over. But he believes that four or five years are not enough to deliver and he should have many more years to rule as is the usual practice in Russia and China. Only then can he fulfill his promises including the one to create Riyasate-madina, a term that has replaced Naya Pakistan. What he will do meanwhile is to try to unite the Muslim ummah to fight against Islamophobia and stop the blasphemous acts committed in the West. This reminds one of Ziaul Haq who used enforcement of his peculiar version of Islam as the vindication of his rule.
