ON 5 August, in the Toshakhana case, the Islamabad Session Court sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan to three years’ imprisonment and five years’ disqualification for holding any public office. Mr. Khan was once the beating heart of the power circle and gained wider popularity due to his populist appeal. However, he is not alone in history in falling victim to his own rhetoric and paying for his ignorance of wind direction. Mr. Khan’s rise and fall reflect the historical saga of the French Revolution and its towering figure; Maximilien Robespierre, the incorruptible, who spearheaded the revolution against the French monarch, Louis XVI.
The French Revolution was a ferocious reaction to economic turmoil, unequal wealth distribution, centralization of power and an increasing gap between the upper and lower classes. Contemporary French society was divided into three estates,, where the clergy and nobles were exempt from taxes. The growing burden of taxation heaped over the poverty-ridden proletariat’s faltering shoulders. All of a sudden, a firebrand orator demagogued the downtrodden masses, using revolutionary philosopher verses as an instrument. Demagogy worked and the ‘Ancient Regime’ was toppled.
For Mr. Khan, like Robespierre, the anti-corruption campaign, education, health and economic uplift, PTI Manifesto 2018, were a few instruments among many that ensured his ascendancy into the power corridor. In the anti-corruption drive, the presumed Pakistan’s Louis XVI, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was apprehended, incarcerated and favored on medical grounds. A number of political nobles were rounded up and thrown into the National Accountability Bureau’s dungeons. Others’ fates, too, oscillated between rhetoric and ambivalence. On international fronts, foreign policy was not systemic but reactionary. The Sino-Pak friendship tree entered the defoliated season while the US distanced itself, except for a stint during withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Mr. Khan’s kitchen cabinet was no exception to creating problems. Highly regarded economists were fired, like Jacques Necker. The delivery in other sectors did not meet expectations. Its low investment in education, deteriorating Corruption Perceptions Index performance and rising inflation rate further question the Khan administration’s capabilities. Mirroring French Princess Marie Antoinette, sundry PTI nobles and duchesses came with the imponderable logicof austerity and mustered nationwide derision for their imprudent accounts. In other words, the ordinary masses must suffer for the government’s mismanaged financial policies.
Niccolò Machiavelli warned, “Choose wise men for your advisors,” which is a vital yardstick to gauge a prince’s prudence. Contrary to Machiavelli’s advice, Mr. Khan’s advisors were way below mediocre but proficient at adding problems to already dwindling state affairs. Being dual citizens and non-electables, many in Khan’s policy-making circle had no substantial interest in creating mass-friendly policies but were obsessed with their personal gains. Like Robespierre, Mr. Khan and his team’s ceaseless obsession with the corrupt practices of the previous government had swerved him from the vital responsibilities, any pragmatic government is supposed to discharge. After being wounded by the Pandora’s Box scandal, the overused anti-corruption manifesto of PTI was torn apart by a report by Transparency International. The sluggish progress of CPEC traces its roots somewhere in the cabinet. This consists of both the Western inclined capitalist class and those with a myopic understanding of China.
On the foreign policy front, the Khan administration failed to design a policy document that could provide proper direction in the face of an ideological confrontation between the US and China. At times, it was found too enthusiastic to help cut a deal between the US and the Taliban; other times, it bemoaned Biden’s oblivious approach to not calling Mr. Khan. The West has been frequently criticized for its secular norms; relations with China remained cold; domestic and foreign policy were coloured by the self-interpretation of Islam; and it celebrated like amateur the return of Taliban.
Back in the French Revolution, Robespierre’s inflated confidence served as the impetus for his ignorant reading of the political picture. On the one hand, he replicated the ancient regime’s authority centralization, while on the other, mounting chaos paved the way for Napoleon’s rise as a military dictator. Mr. Khan, too, earned the nickname “Press Freedom Predator” for his ruthless clampdown on the press in Pakistan and muffling critical voices. His government’s performance was significantly lower on the Corruption Perceptions Index. After his removal in a democratic vote of no confidence, his crusade of political victimization shifted to his unbroken wave of protest.
This was limited to KP and Punjab because of the PTI government there, which further heightened the political crisis. After the May 9 incident, his own party members turned against Mr. Khan for his irrational campaigning methods. The mass exodus of PTI leaders confirms that neither former Prime Minister Imran Khan was familiar with Machiavelli’s advice nor learned anything from Maximilien Robespierre’s fate. One of the vital reasons for Maximilien Robespierre’s fall was his obsession to elevate the ‘reign of terror’ into ‘great terror’ due to his God Complex, foniasophobia and schadenfreude. So was Mr Khan.
—The writer is a PhD Scholar at the Area Study Centre, Peshawar University.
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