INTERNATIONAL DESK: Finally, the cypher gate has become Imran Khan’s nemesis and has ended the dilemma of Pakistan Army Chief Gen Asim Munir, along with the poll blues of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his shaky coalition, writes Delhi-based senior journalist and commentator, Malladi Rama Rao.
Trail by special court, and capital punishment under the Official Secrets Act are expected in quick succession to make Imran Khan disappear from the country’s political map.
The civilian and military leadership have been gunning for him for more than a year but have been apprehensive about packing him off from his six-bedroom Lahore home, Bani Gala, to a Rawalpindi jail.
Not any longer. Certainly, not after the confession of a former aide has exposed the fast bowler – batsman turned politician, the darling of Islamists, to charges of sedition, spying and espionage. Well, to the great relief of Pakistan’s patron, the United States.
Pakistan’s Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) has already summoned Imran for questioning. If he ducks the summons, as he did twice so far, his absence would be taken as an admission of guilt.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Army Chief Munir are believed to be in favour of severe punishment for Imran Khan. He has been running a covert and not-so-covert campaign against the all-powerful military ever since he became a former Prime Minister in April last year.
He has built a narrative that he had lost his crown because of a ‘conspiracy’ by the US, the country he had annoyed with his relentless criticism. When realization dawned that he or Pakistan can ill afford to incur the wrath of Uncle Sam, he rolled back his cypher gate and mounted a frontal attack on his very own God-father, Gen Qamar Bajwa, the army chief of the day, for orchestrating his fall.
Army is a holy cow for Pakistan politicians but not for the masses, who have been at the receiving end of its crony capitalism. Imran Khan cashed in on this reality check. His anti-America rhetoric and pro-Taliban tilt were lapped up by the overwhelmingly radicalized Pakistanis.
This manifested in the May 9 mayhem that gave sleepless nights to the military brass and political executive alike. It was not the first time that the all-powerful military in Pakistan had fallen off the high pedestal on which it is usually perched firmly but this time around the Khakis are finding it tough to quickly regain their sheen.
Viewed against this background, the latest ‘bombshell’ of a ‘confessional statement’ by Azam Khan, his former aide, has put Imran Khan in hot soup. Azam was Principal Secretary to Imran Khan when he was the prime minister, and whatever the bureaucrat had told a judicial magistrate appears to have become the epitaph for Imran.
The Azam- speak is that Imran had stooped to play the victim card at the cost of ties with the United States of America, USA, which has been a part of the A-trinity guiding and guarding Pakistan for the past seven decades of its existence as the land of the pure.
Azam said Imran had forged the so-called encrypted diplomatic message sent by the Pakistan embassy in Washington and thus pump-primed his narrative that the US was trying to punish the prime minister of the Islamic Republic for daring to stand up to it.
The White House as also the State Department have repeatedly denied the allegations, stating that Washington has had no role in Imran Khan’s downfall.
Since Imran himself has piped down on his anti-American rhetoric, the alleged US role is no longer a headline. But attention has stayed on his allegation against the Pakistan Army, especially, Gen Bajwa.
Clever and calculated Imran Khan is not unaware of the designs of the civilian government and the military both for him and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
His going is going to be tough now that PTI defectors have formed a pampered King’s Party.
His party may not be banned and prevented from participating in the nationwide elections due later in the year.
But with Imran likely to be axed from the political theatre altogether, his hard-core loyalists, deemed lumpen youth, may either simply get dissolved or ‘nationalised’ by powerful satraps.
Either way, it may herald curtains down on the Imran saga.
On his part, the erstwhile playboy may hope to bounce back one day by rekindling his support base built on the foundation of Islamic nationalism.
The writer of the article is Malladi Rama Rao, a New Delhi-based journalist and commentator. (ANI)
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