By Samuel Baid
If the stories from Pakistan are to be taken seriously, country’s showy Prime Minister Imran Khan is getting emotionally and politically isolated. Gallup surveys show that his popularity has fallen from 67 percent to 44 percent in recent times.
His second TV star wife Rehan Khan’s book on her life with Imran Khan before divorce has become a source of great embarrassment to the Prime Minister, who during pillow talk with her had bragged about his romantic escapades and how many love children he had sired in different parts of the world including in India.
His third perceptive wife Bhushra Bibi has reportedly left him alone in his beloved Bani Gala and according to media reports living in Lahore. The scanty reports don’t say if that leaves Imran without her spiritual (in public words ‘black magic’) support with which he sought to solve the country’s economic problem and other issues.
Another problem Imran Khan is facing is desertion by his confidants in the party. In Punjab, Akram Khan and his followers joined the party’s faction in the Assembly led by Imran’s former friend and his present enemy Jahangir Tareen. We wanted to arrest Tareen but his advisers told him not to make this blunder. Tareen wants Aleem Khan to replace Punjab’s present Chief Minister Usman Buzdar in whom Imran has total faith. At the time of appointing them (2018) politically little known Buzdar met opposition from his party colleagues.
Jahangir Tareen, a sugar scam fame, broke up with Imran when his friendship became embarrassing for the latter amid sugar shortage last year. Tareen vowed to teach Imran a lesson in Punjab. His coalition particularly the Quaid Muslim League has made it clear to Imran that Ch. Parvez Elahi be made Chief Minister of Punjab before the opposition’s no-confidence motion.
Last year before one senate election Imran tried his best to make the Election Commission to hold the election with open vote but the Commission held it with secret vote, Imran’s candidate lost. He accused his party’s Senators of taking bribes from the opposition. Since then, he is against the Election Commission and the Commission against him.
The Commission on February 18 directed authorities to make public the entire report the Scrutiny Committee which it had constituted to audit PTI’s foreign funds. The complaint had been filed by Party’s own founding member Akbar Babar in 2014. The committee had already released some parts of its findings which talked about the undisclosed foreign funds coming to Imran and his party and those funds were concealed in a number of bank accounts.
A media group has carried a campaign targeting the cancer hospital, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital, which Imran Khan built in the memory of his mother who died of cancer. It is true that Imran received a lot of funding from within and abroad in the name of this hospital. The Jang group’s allegation is that these funds were diverted to PTI’s operations. Such disclosures equate Imran with those opposition leaders whom he day and night condemns as thieves. He has made this condemnation as a propaganda plank for the 2023 general elections. “Don’t vote for those who have looted the country.”
In his recklessness Imran may not consider the desertions of his party men may damage him politically in the next elections in 2023. This recklessness is reflected in his admission he made early last month. He said: The biggest problem is that there has been no connection between (his) government and the interest of the country”. This is a hard slap on the faces of Ministers heading different Ministries.
Imran cannot ignore the pile of corruption cases that the Election Commission has against him. He also cannot forget his predecessor Nawaz Sharif who was disqualified by the Supreme Court on corruption charges in 2017. Sharif was disqualified for life. Imran also cannot forget that as the opposition and the media allege, the Army made him Prime Minister.
Having openly and blatantly promoted Imran at the cost of established mainstream political parties like Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Army must be feeling itself caught in a cleft stick. It is trying to get out of it by distancing from Imran and company and hobnobbing with Nawaz League’s and PPP’s leaders.
Pakistani political experts think that the Opposition’s no-confidence motion which the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) has filed in the National Assembly to remove Imran as Prime Minister may have the Army’s nudge.