So Imran Khan stood his ground and made history. He stared down all the elements against him – alone. He was unflinching in the face of deceit, treachery and betrayal; not losing his composure nor his sense of decency. He displayed no frustration during this ordeal of an election where nerves were tested and resolves challenged. He was not flustered, remained unruffled and was not intimidated by the one-sided show.
A smaller person would have wilted in the face of the array of State machinery and Government apparatus aligned against him. I regret to say I too proved to be amongst those smaller people when I could find no light at the end of the tunnel; I gave up. People such as me looked for conflict and confrontation and when we did not find any we were disappointed and disillusioned. Imran was proven right with his Statesman approach of avoiding physical conflict and instead galvanizing people into a force to be reckoned with.
Understanding the matter better
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Never before has a hostile government been allowed to chair a government, illegally through a judicial license, and permitted to conduct an election of this nature and magnitude where a conflict of interest was so blatantly served. The Election Commission conveniently looked the other way so that the many violations that were duly reported were neither investigated nor addressed. They fiddled with the voter lists and tried their utmost to make it as difficult as possible for the PTI voters to cast their vote. The living were declared dead and denied the right to vote while the dead were declared alive and voted with impunity. What a crying shame!
The Provincial government posted people of their choice to posts with intent to interfere in the election process and in violation of the defined protocol. They shamelessly ordered the arrests of prominent PTI leaders, arranged for others to be attacked on the streets and yet banned many from entering the province. They ensured that transport was denied to PTI voters and ensured that their movement was hampered and disrupted. They even encouraged their own touts to stuff ballot boxes with bogus votes.
I for one was neither surprised nor shocked at the blatant attempts at rigging the elections by the sitting government I was sure that these elections would be conducted in a highly biased environment and I know I was right on all counts. I was also certain that with all these shenanigans, the PMLn would secure a huge victory and declare themselves the legitimate choice of the people. I was sure that the people – weak, helpless, fatalistic and disheartened would surrender themselves to the elements and resign themselves to providence in recognition of their own irrelevance and insignificance; doomed to be nothing but inconsequential pawns in this great fraud.
However, I could not have been more wrong about my own country fellows – men and women. The masses rose like the phoenix from the ashes of doom, and under the clarion call of moral assertion, patriotism and principle, they spoke with one voice and ousted an aberration that ought never to have been there. They rejected an artificial coalition, they dismissed a government that was never theirs nor could ever be theirs. They reacted and responded towards this charade where the single largest party was reduced to a minority in the national assembly by artificial means and engineered methods.
Yes, the people had spoken – they had had enough
Now, a day after these by-elections; on the 18th of July, I am amazed at some people who are appreciating, what they are now calling, free and fair elections. They were neither free nor fair. The administration was overwhelmed by the masses who prevented fraud, scheming and deceit by the sheer presence and the momentum of humanity.
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It is for the first time in Pakistan that the people themselves influenced the results. Such a thing happened in 1970 with Shiekh Mujib ur Rehman but he never had to encounter the kind of opposition and hurdles as the PTI did and Mujib won because the elections were actually fair and free. Though a belligerent Bhutto, who had lost the elections, could not live with this and manipulated whatever he could to prevent Mujib from taking away the premiership. But here is a very different case; it was the people who prevented an election from being stolen.
Yet whereas the people spoke, it was Imran Khan who by his sheer character, determination, and reputation, carried the people with him to victory. He gave them purpose, resolution and persistence. People sensed being part of the game to contribute to a national cause. Yet most of all, Imran showed all that a soul of an honest, selfless leader, a determined and courageous head of a nation looks like. Who would not follow him especially when the alternative was a band of convicted felons and people accused of theft, fraud and scams?
The manipulation, conspiracies and intrigues of the government were simply overwhelmed by the massive support that the PTI had. The sea of humanity at the polling stations, and people at various government centers prevented the government from the free hand that they needed to win this election. People of the government who have conceded defeat and accepted a PTI victory ought to be commended and it’s now prayed that the country should get on and move along as one people and one nation. Let’s hope that now a general election is announced as early as possible so that a formal unified government can take its place to run the country and the uncertainty ends.
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The new government, when in place, must set about putting the economy right on a war footing, define a clear direction for foreign policy and specify the priorities for national security. Also in time, in the interest of history and to some extent, some accountability, a white paper must be constructed to illustrate how things unfolded and brought us to where we are – divided, bankrupt and almost isolated.
It’s a matter of national importance that matters be identified so as to begin the process of reforms that this country needs so badly. In fact, the new government, when it arrives, may like to establish a reforms committee for the purpose. It will help in restructuring the judiciary, the police, the constitution, accountability where needed, administrative units, education and many more issues of vital national importance. With the envisaged huge majority in parliament the new government, when elected, would be able to make radical changes and take difficult decisions with relative ease.
Writer, Gen. Tariq Khan, retired as head of Pakistan’s Central Command and has led Frontier Corps to victory against TTP. He has written and lectured extensively on the issues related to Afghanistan, the United States, and the Taliban. The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Global Village Space.