This development comes two days after the police registered an FIR against him under the anti-terror laws for ‘terrorising and threatening’ police officials and the judge. The government appears to be setting the stage for Imran Khan’s arrest but remains undecided due to the backlash this step might generate from the party’s supporters.

Why does Imran fear arrest?

Politicians peddling a populist narrative usually tend to tell their supporters that they don’t fear arrest, but it is clear that Khan has trouble with being arrested. Many observers are of the opinion that going to prison can strengthen his narrative of victimhood and further fuel his support base but unlike other political leaders such as Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, Khan does not have a history of facing arrests or repressive tactics.

The ’20-year political struggle’ that he boasts of also has largely been a bed of roses, for he has always been a blue-eyed boy of the country’s establishment. Now that the establishment has finally withdrawn its support, Khan knows that he could face the kind of victimisation that he had been subjecting others to, and he is not ready for that.

Politicians who firmly believe in their narrative do not fear state action, but that is not the case with Imran Khan because his populist claims about an “international conspiracy” are a mere eyewash. If the PTI actually considered the US responsible for Khan’s ouster, it would not have hired an American firm to work on developing the party’s ‘good relations’ between the country.

Anti-terror laws misused in the past

As prime minister, Imran Khan persecuted his opponents and fabricated cases against them were filed as part of political victimisation, but this does not mean the same should happen to him and his party members. By using sedition and anti-terror laws that have been misused in the past, the government will undermine its own credibility. What Imran Khan said about the woman judge was a threatening statement that also involved sexism (which he has displayed many times before), but it cannot be termed terrorism. Action against him under the anti-terror laws therefore makes no sense.

There are enough justifiable grounds to act against Khan over his attempts to create chaos and unrest in the country to regain power. The Supreme Court’s verdict in a case pertaining to unrest during the PTI’s long march to Islamabad in May had called on the intelligence agencies to investigate Imran Khan’s role in instigating violence and unrest during the protest. He had violated the SC’s order by asking his supporters to reach Islamabad’s D-Chowk. The government has the option to take action against the PTI chief using the apex court’s verdict but nothing has come out of the long march case.

Allegations of sexual violence

The PTI chief had alleged that his imprisoned aide, Shahbaz Gill, faced sexual assault in custody, and the Islamabad police denied the allegation. During his appearance before a judicial magistrate, Shahbaz Gill said he faced no sexual assault. But while speaking to reporters later, he confirmed that he was sexually violated.

Regardless of the contradictory statements, these claims must be investigated and the government should take action against the perpetrators if the allegations turn out to be true.

A pro-PTI YouTuber, Jamil Farooqui, was arrested by the Islamabad police on Monday who allegedly beat him up while taking him into custody. Such actions are condemnable and counterproductive. To counter PTI’s propaganda, the government should instead improve its media strategy so the party’s lies can be debunked. Action against propagandists should be taken as per the law but banning social media platforms or using violent tactics is never the solution.

Flood-affected forgotten amid power games

This tussle between PTI and the government dominates national media and has completely overshadowed a much graver issue: the destruction caused by floods in several regions of the country. Floods caused by heavy rainfalls continue to claim lives and destroy livelihood. The disaster response has been weak at best, and the authorities do not seem to have a plan to rehabilitate the affected and rebuild the areas that have been wiped off the face of earth. Instead of utilising its energies on the PTI, the government should form a rescue and rehabilitation plan so the Pakistanis affected by this calamity can be saved.

Imran Khan must also realise the severity of the flood situation and postpone his party’s planned protests. Both sides need to display maturity and end this confrontation in the interest of relief efforts for the victims of climate change.

This article first appeared on India Today. 

News Desk

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Even before the no-confidence saga, PTI had been accusing its critics of receiving foreign funding. Under the PTI, journalists who dared to challenge the regime were declared agents of CIA and RAW by government-funded troll armies on social media. Organised campaigns were launched to level such allegations not just against journalists critical of the then ruling party but also to target activists who highlighted the government’s failures. It is a bitter irony that a party whose leaders liberally used “foreign funding” allegations to malign its critics had itself been receiving illegal funding from abroad.

Imran Khan’s act of illegally hiding accounts and filing false declarations means he can be disqualified under Article 62/63 of the Constitution of Pakistan that requires one to be ‘sadiq’ and ‘ameen’ (honest and truthful). Although this provision of the Constitution is controversial and too vague to be fairly implemented, its selective application would strengthen the impression that Imran Khan is unduly favoured by the institutions.
Former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) supreme leader Nawaz Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court in 2017 under the same part of the Constitution over undeclared iqama. Therefore, if Imran Khan does not face consequences for misleading the nation about the source of his party’s funding, it would mean that there is one law for him and another for other politicians.

Expecting that the ECP would expose the truth about his party, Imran Khan had recently sought the chief election commissioner’s resignation many times, following which PTI’s social media team had initiated smear campaigns against him.

Just a few days before the verdict, Imran Khan had called on his party’s workers to hold a demonstration outside the ECP office in Islamabad. Even after his surprising landslide victory in the recently held by-elections in Punjab, Imran continued attacking the ECP and accused it of bias. It is now clear that his criticism of the election watchdog was an attempt to discredit it ahead of the prohibited funding verdict against the party.

Meanwhile, PTI spokespersons are trying to justify their party’s misrepresentation of facts, with former minister Fawad Chaudhry saying that Imran Khan was unaware of the undeclared accounts. The PTI cannot put a reasonable defence, and is likely to further censure the ECP in hopes of threatening the institutions into submission.
Observers also indicate that the Supreme Court is likely to grant PTI relief if it hears the case, as the top court’s controversial three-member bench is known to issue evidently pro-PTI judgments — to the extent that the judges backtracked from their own earlier orders when it suited the party.

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government that has been discredited by the PTI through the party’s slogans against “treason” and “foreign conspiracy” now has an opportunity to counter Imran Khan’s hateful rhetoric by highlighting his hypocrisy in accepting and hiding prohibited foreign funding — all the while accusing them of being foreign agents.

The coalition government had been losing the war of narratives as Imran Khan’s populist rhetoric based on lies about a “foreign conspiracy” appeared to have been well-received among the public. PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) have been unprepared to fight on the narrative front as they had let Imran Khan’s dangerous narrative go unchallenged. The results of the Punjab by-election proved that populism works, especially when there is no one to challenge it.

With the ECP verdict, the PDM parties now have an opportunity to challenge the PTI’s narrative that had created an increased sense of polarisation in the country. The public needs to be told that a party that created an ‘us vs them’ environment, pitted the citizenry against each other and termed all its opponents “traitors” has itself been dishonest to the nation.

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