“Me, me, me, me, me…” was yet again the content of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech to the Azad Kashmir Assembly on Kashmir Solidarity Day on 5 February. Imran Khan first told them he was a democrat — and clarified that it was not for the sake of being in power, but because it was the best governance system available to the world that the West had usurped from Islam.
Perhaps he thought the Kashmiris had never heard him talk about him and the Pakistan Army being on the same page and standing behind his government, nor perhaps had they heard his ministers oft repeat this to the media and the public, nor gotten wind of how the Army helped rig the 2018 general elections to install and foist him upon the hapless Kashmiris and the Pakistani citizenry at large. Perhaps he had hoped they hadn’t watched his address where he said war was not an option to free Kashmir, after 72 years of promises to the contrary.
Imran Khan’s ‘Favourite’ Topic: Corruption
After a lecture on democracy, the poor assembly was subjected to Imran’s broken record of ‘Krrruption’ (Corruption). Perhaps his inner guilt led him to declare that he had no personal vendetta against opponents his government is charging with corruption and incarcerating without evidence. Not sure what place this particular point had in a Kashmir Day address, but then again, corruption is one of the few topics he always loves to rail on about, no matter the subject at hand. He has made sure to announce to the world at every opportunity and forum that ‘we are the most corrupt nation in the world’ and ‘this is the root cause of all our ills’ — not the generals, not the martial laws, not the puppets like him. Nope.
Anyway, I’m sure he was sure that the Kashmiris hadn’t read how he hounded the now the ex-FIA chief, Bashir Memon, to victimise his opponents with corruption charges.
Imran Khan’s quest has been personal vendetta only, though his political opponents have never harmed him personally. His only grudge is that they are more popular and can, and do, win against him at the ballot. For this he hates them viscerally, and won’t stop at any cruelty to remove them form his path.
Imran Khan’s definition of loyalty is when someone arrests his opponents on false charges upon receiving one phone call: “You see, I have made one call to him and he arrested Shahbaz the following day.” After the FIA told Imran Khan’s government, it couldn’t proceed on the basis of a press talk, “a desperate government official demanded the arrest of Senator Pervez Rashid if not Maryam”. But the government could not find an answer to ‘under what charges?’
Imran Khan’s Long Diatribe on Democracy & Corruption
“Find something from Air Blue (the airline owned and run by former PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi,” was the response from the government when asked by the Bashir-led FIA as to under what charges they could arrest him. The reported story is a litany of abuse of power and malice. Imran Khan got Opposition leaders arrested by the Anti-Narcotics Force and the National Accountability Bureau when the Federal Investigation Agency threw up its hands and told him they could not arrest and charge his opponents without evidence.
The gold nugget in this saga was when Imran Khan told Bashir Memon he should take him with him on his next visit to Saudi Arabia to show him how no on dare defy Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“How do they dare castigate us while sitting in Pakistan,” said Imran Khan of his opponents. The story has now been edited and Imran Khan’s name removed and replaced with ‘top official’.
After this long diatribe on democracy and ‘krrruption’ (corruption), Imran Khan finally addressed the issue of Indian Kashmir, and essentially left the solution to Allah and Modi. Allah exhorts ‘sabr’ (patience), and Modi had paved the way with his 5 August legislative changes to ‘free’ Kashmir. So Pakistan could rest at ease.
But he did tell the Pakistani Kashmiris how his personal struggle and knowledge had ‘woken up’ the world to Modi’s excesses in Indian Kashmir. After reading accounts of excesses in the international press, he claimed to have educated them.
Imran Khan’s ‘Claims’
Imran Khan claimed that he educated Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau on Kashmir, and because of him Merkel brought up the human rights violations in Kashmir with the Indian government. He further claimed that he educated the world about the RSS ideology being based on the Nazi ideology. The Germany-Japan border man claimed he was a ‘student of history’. Who can forget the industry the two countries built on their common borders to prevent future wars. The man even claimed he ‘schooled’ President Trump three times on Kashmir.
Personally, I’m wondering why no one has been able to school him on the Chinese Uighurs, whom he claims to know nothing about.
And claiming victory on diplomatic, media, and political fronts, Imran Khan concluded by telling the audience that over 600 EU parliamentarians and over 150 US and UK lawmakers had passed resolutions against India ‘thanks to him’. But his future action plan still only remained dependent upon Allah and Modi. Perhaps he expects that the AJK Assembly never heard him rooting and campaigning for Modi before the Indian general elections. Mr Khan claimed that the world came to know of Modi’s nefarious ‘Hindu supremacist’ designs for India only after 5 August (despite it being in Modi’s manifesto all the time).
Perhaps Mr Khan needs intravenous coffee for him to wake up and realise that the people populating this earth are not fools.
Gul Bukhari is a Pakistani journalist and rights activist. She tweets @GulBukhari. This is a personal blog, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)