PTI chief Imran Khan’s letter to President Arif Alvi is not clear in many respects. The first is the capacity in which the letter is being written. Is a party chief writing to a party member giving orders? Or a citizen to the head of state? Or just to make a political point, knowing fully well that the President cannot address any of the issues in the letter except on the binding advice of the government?
Mr Khan rails against DG ISPR for his press conferences, and against the military for favouring the government. He should be ready to accept sauce for the goose as being good for the gander. While in government, he never tired of claiming to be on the same page as the establishment, and after his fall from office himself has disclosed how he had been helped by the establishment at various junctures, in such apparently basic tasks as rounding up legislators for passing bills. If he wants to realign his ‘us versus them’ from ‘us’ being the PTI and ‘them’ being the opposition to ‘them’ being the establishment and ‘us’ being all political forces, he would do best to return to Parliament, not just because of the positive optics, but to legislate substantial if need be. Mr Khan is being disingenuous if he now wants institutions to observe their constitutional, safer years in office encouraging them to do the opposite. He is also not starting off such an enterprise felicitously if he starts with an instigation of a constitutional office bearer to go beyond his constitutional bounds.
The establishment-politician relationship is indeed of vital importance to the nation, and should be openly debated. At the same time, it is too important to be a political football, with parties supporting or opposing neutrality in the light of how much support they expect. Unfortunately, the reason Mr Khan has indulged in what can only be described as whining is because his party is no longer getting the unqualified, and frankly often improper, support it once did. So long as any party sees the establishment as a prop for itself, the latter will keep on finding itself dragged into politics, and subject to the temptation of involving itself in the business of turning pygmies into giants.
