The failure of Imran Khan comes as no surprise

More than nine months after Imran Khan, the great hope of the well-heeled “Khanistas” (the Pakistani version of Bhakts), was manoeuvred into the office by the “khakis”, the dream is starting to unravel. Except for his most die-hard supporters, no one had really expected Imran Khan to work miracles and turn Pakistan around. But hardly anyone except his most inveterate critics and perhaps the perpetual cynics had expected the sort of feckless governance and complete drift in the affairs of state that is on display. Forget about starting to fix things, the Imran Khan-led regime has not even been able to set a clear-cut direction, much less a course of action to pull the country out of the morass in which it finds itself.

During his time in the Opposition, Imran Khan had built a cult following with his rabble rousing. He had managed to convince his hard-core supporters that he was the messiah who would deliver Pakistan from the venal and vile politicians. It was not just the youth (mostly middle and upper middle class) but also most of the uniformed services which identified with him and believed that he would transform Pakistan. In fact, the Pakistani armed forces rooted for him to a point where they actually paved the way for his ascent to power by fixing the match and tilting the field in his favour.

While Imran Khan remains Teflon-coated for the Khanistas, it is now clear to most other people that Imran Khan was mostly hot air—a real “feku”. He still says all the right things but has no idea on how to implement the tall promises he had made and continues to make. It is almost as though he is living in an alternate reality, or perhaps is in stupor, that makes him take flights of fancy. At a time when the economy is broke, development expenditure has been cut drastically, growth is falling alarmingly, debt servicing and defence alone have surpassed the entire revenue of the federal government, Imran Khan like a potentate of yore goes about announcing fancy packages: a PKR 100 billion here, another PKR 150 billion there, a poverty alleviation scheme of PKR 80 billion (even 10 times the amount wouldn’t be enough) which will bring prosperity, a hare-brained housing programme to construct five million houses, and so on and so forth.

None of this is surprising to anyone who has watched Imran Khan when he was in Opposition. He was a one trick pony then—raved and ranted about corruption—and remains a one trick pony now. Except that even that one trick is only a trick because half his Cabinet is stacked with people who are steeped in the corrupt and venal ways of Purana Pakistan. The thing is that Imran Khan was and is a man of limited intelligence with no administrative experience or knowledge (unless of course you consider leading an 11-man cricket team as being enough to run a country of 210 million people).

The only thing Imran Khan had was his clipped and correct upper-crust English accent. In a country where the ISPR spokesman and the top most spin doctor tweets of the “bondage” between the people and the military, someone like Imran stands out as a genius because he speaks good English. Other than his accent, Imran Khan was the sort of guy who regurgitates the last thing that he reads in the papers, or sees on TV, or even what someone whispers in his ear.  He doesn’t have the intellectual bandwidth to apply his mind or even consider the ridiculousness of what he so nonchalantly says in public. Simply put, Imran Khan is a prime example of a disastrous cocktail of arrogance and ignorance, which makes him both abusive and abrasive.

As if his administrative and governance failures were not glaring enough—despite his complete control over his party and his claims of enjoying total support of the army—Imran Khan is so insecure that he has appointed two complete non-entities and utterly incompetent men as chief minister in two crucial provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab and is trying to run the administration in both these provinces by remote control. His inability to even forge an understanding, much less a consensus, on issues critical to those who “selected” him as Prime Minister are now fraying the strings that control him. He has bad-mouthed and needlessly hounded all his opponents to a point where getting the opposition on board for legislation on the military courts, finance commission and even the anti-terrorism stand is now looking impossible.

The economy is collapsing. Growth is likely to fall from around 5.2 per cent to anything between 3-3.5 per cent which given a population growth of 2.4 per cent means virtually no increase in incomes. Interest rates have gone through the roof and are likely to rise further. This has made doing business unviable because already businesses are borrowing money only to stay afloat. The massive depreciation of the currency—it is feared that the PKR might fall to as much as 180 to a dollar in the coming months—has made imports expensive leading to rise in inflation (highest in five years and still rising) with utility and energy prices breaking the back of the people.

The greatest achievement of Imran Khan being touted by his camp followers is his successful foreign policy which is nothing more than his managing to get loans from Saudi Arabia, UAE and China, which in turn have increased the debt burden and with it debt servicing. The confrontation with India has proved to be extremely expensive and forced a big rise in the defence budget at a time when the fiscal deficit is out of control. People are losing jobs by the day and economic distress is rising. After some grandstanding Pakistan is finally all set to approach the IMF which is likely to force a stiff structural adjustment programme on Pakistan—which in turn will worsen the economic crisis.

Suddenly, many of the members of the media corps (journalists who work as adjuncts of the military and take their line and their awards from the military spokesman’s office) who had been rooting for Imran Khan have started asking tough questions to retain a modicum of credibility. He has let loose his storm troopers in the social media space to troll his critics. The old media is meanwhile being pressured into compliance using the bait and threats of advertisements to keep them in line. Ironically, instead of helping the Imran Khan regime in painting a rosy picture, the muzzling of the media is leading to pressure building up in the system because it is finding no outlet.

The situation is ideal for the opposition parties. But they are in no position to exploit the situation partly because the main leaders of these parties are trying to save themselves from jail, and partly because they are trying to win an approval from the military before they take to the streets. In what is a classic game theory framework, the opposition parties are trying to maximise their individual welfare instead of cooperating to maximise their collective welfare. Meanwhile, the army is scratching its head on what to do to handle the situation. Having invested so much in Imran Khan and pushed the other parties against the wall, the military is for now left with no option but to stick with the man they selected. But for how long?

Even if the main opposition parties don’t take to the streets, the rising economic distress is going to create pressure from below. If that happens, the opposition parties will probably be left with no choice but to ride that wave. With the Khanate going kaput, it is going to be only a matter of time before the “khakis” will be left with no option but to intervene. It is of course another matter that the military’s “khakicracy” is really a kakistocracy.