Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military, have often been overcome by the hubris of power and have ignored subtle changes that take place over time. However, it is these “little big things” as Islamabad editor of Dawn, Fahd Hussain notes, that “have a nasty habit of puncturing the hubris of power.”
Prime Minister Imran Khan and his advisors appears overconfident these days because “the PDM is a damp squib, the Jahangir Tareen threat has subsided, the budget has been passed, the controversial electoral reforms bill has been held up, the much-touted cabinet reshuffle has been shelved, and the economy is chugging along at a manageable pace.”
In Hussain’s words, Khan “is talking the big talk — Kashmir, India, America, Afghanistan, — and swinging his rhetorical hammer like the mighty Thor. Hear his speeches, listen to his words, feel his tone, sense his oratorical swagger and you can tell the man has a grand scheme at hand. Standing atop the debris of broken promises and defective governance, he is envisioning a leap over and above this heap into the next level of political contestation where he towers over his opponents. He sees himself in the big league tackling bigger issues across an even bigger table.”
What is being ignored by him, however, is “the gradual meltdown of the so-called accountability process as leader after leader from the opposition gets relief from the courts.” Underneath “this hoopla of PTI’s hubris, PML-N leaders continue to walk free from NAB’s custody and into the sunlight of political vindication. Shehbaz Sharif, Rana Sanaullah, Saad Rafiq, Ahsan Iqbal, Shahid Abbasi, Miftah Ismail, Khawaja Asif and many others have successfully obtained bails and in the process torn holes in the accountability narrative so carefully nurtured by the PM. The courts in almost all cases have said the NAB had no solid evidence to back up its allegations against these politicians.”
Hussain ends his piece by noting “the swagger can give one a misplaced sense of security. There is a world out there, far away from hyperactive battlefields of twitter hashtags, Instagram memes and Facebook posts, which is thumping to the beat of conventional thana-katchery politics. The local bodies are groaning back to life after Supreme Court’s detailed judgement, and in the Punjab these bodies are dominated by the PML-N. Something is cooking below the radar level.”
