Imran Khan’s politics
Rizwan Akhtar
Thursday, July 05, 2012 - This is in response to ‘The man with no plan for Pakistan’ by Sadanand Dhume (2nd July). I strongly disagree with Sadanand Dhume’s conclusions and insights on Pakistan and Imran Khan’s politics. In the first instance the writer’s sly implicative that Pakistanis are looking for a ‘charlatan’ as their saviour is a denigrating expression and it reeks of the writer’s jaundiced opinion on the subject in hand.
From the American perspective the hatred of the US is always taken as a gesture of insult. The imperial powers are not only hubristic but self-righteous. The US does not look for the reasons as why Pakistanis hate them and their policies. The drone strikes and American intervention into Pakistani territories under the umbrella of war on terror has laid the seeds of an inveterate hatred. Imran Khan is neither responsible for this hatred nor he uses anti-American sentiments to further his politics. The US aid never reaches to the deserved sections of the society as it becomes gobbled by the corrupt Government machinery. In fact people want to get rid of this US “aid syndrome’. Most of Pakistani view the US aid as an imprecation on their collective identity. Musharff, the right-hand of the US, not only sold out Pakistan’s territories to the US but also its conscience. Every time there is a drone strike we come to know that a high value target is achieved followed by a casual utterance-‘collateral damage’- which over the years is the US cliché wherever their imperial machinery set its destructive foot.
What the writer calls Imran Khan’s window of ‘delusional politics’ is in fact to many Pakistanis an aperture of effulgent hope opening on a political landscape marred by corruption and malpractices. ‘Confronting the US won’t destroy us’—Imran wants Pakistan not to parasite slavishly on the American dole. Imran is an honest man and he can eliminate bigger corruption in 90 days. He is running a state-of-the art Cancer hospital which is the only of its kind in the world. He is preparing his team and in time it will unfold.
—Wivenhoe Park, UK
From the American perspective the hatred of the US is always taken as a gesture of insult. The imperial powers are not only hubristic but self-righteous. The US does not look for the reasons as why Pakistanis hate them and their policies. The drone strikes and American intervention into Pakistani territories under the umbrella of war on terror has laid the seeds of an inveterate hatred. Imran Khan is neither responsible for this hatred nor he uses anti-American sentiments to further his politics. The US aid never reaches to the deserved sections of the society as it becomes gobbled by the corrupt Government machinery. In fact people want to get rid of this US “aid syndrome’. Most of Pakistani view the US aid as an imprecation on their collective identity. Musharff, the right-hand of the US, not only sold out Pakistan’s territories to the US but also its conscience. Every time there is a drone strike we come to know that a high value target is achieved followed by a casual utterance-‘collateral damage’- which over the years is the US cliché wherever their imperial machinery set its destructive foot.
What the writer calls Imran Khan’s window of ‘delusional politics’ is in fact to many Pakistanis an aperture of effulgent hope opening on a political landscape marred by corruption and malpractices. ‘Confronting the US won’t destroy us’—Imran wants Pakistan not to parasite slavishly on the American dole. Imran is an honest man and he can eliminate bigger corruption in 90 days. He is running a state-of-the art Cancer hospital which is the only of its kind in the world. He is preparing his team and in time it will unfold.
—Wivenhoe Park, UK
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