Many among PTI rank and file still consider Imran Khan a flawless and competent leader who alone can bring the country out of doldrums. When Khan blamed the previous rulers for corruption, he received a full-throated applause from party supporters. When he said that the PML-N and PPP were responsible for inflation and unemployment, Khan’s fans parroted the claims. Some were however unable to understand why the prices of wheat flour and sugar skyrocketed even under the PTI administration and why the government took no action against the mafia which it held responsible for inflation. Murmuring started in the wake of PTI’s big losses in by-elections, Cantt Boards polls and the disastrous LG elections in KP. Questions began now to be asked why the PTI government failed to get any opposition leader convicted on corruption cases despite being in power for the fourth year.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid is the first to concede that people voted for Imran to hold the corrupt accountable, ‘but we failed.’ The excuse Rashid gave is that the roots of the mafia are so deep that the government couldn’t get hold of them. The claim however defies reason. PM Imran Khan continued to claim for full three years that he was on the same page with the army. The government got opposition leaders arrested before caring to collect evidence. The NAB chief went out of the way to please the government. NAB officials conducted media trials of the opposition leaders while accountability court judges were chosen by the Law Ministry which was empowered to transfer a judge seen not to be toeing the line instantly through Whatsapp. The accused got justice only from higher judiciary after undergoing prolonged suffering and that too because the government failed to prepare open and shut cases.
Sheikh Rashid claims that people had no reason to blame the PTI government for inflation as it had that disbursed health and ration cards which according to him were major remedial measures but “we just could not make people realize the importance of such facilities”.
