Osman Samiuddin writes in his book, “The Unquiet Ones: A History Of Pakistan Cricket” about Pakistan’s win at Bangalore in 1987, a fabled Test that sealed Pakistan’s first series win in India. Miandad scored no great runs through the series, but one contribution was vital. He is widely considered the tactical spur of Imran Khan’s side, the man who gave detail to Imran’s broad principles. From him would come a tweak in the field here, a bowling change there, a selection gambit. In Bangalore, as deputy to Imran, he convinced him to pick left-arm spinner Iqbal Qasim ahead of the leggie Abdul Qadir. The latter had been easily repelled over four Tests, but he was Imran’s blue-eyed boy. Eventually, Imran relented; those who know Miandad know well that the trick is not to get him to talk but to get him to stop talking. Qasim played, took nine wickets, and won the game. (I will come back to this point later).
Fast forward to Pakistan in June 2022, with sweltering heat, power outages, and combined the massive inflationary pressures, (because of Pakistan’s chronic economic troubles and the resultant price increases due to the Ukraine war) the political party led by the former cricket captain, international playboy, and philanthropist Imran Khan is entangled in a never-ending confrontation with the current coalition government, military establishment, and the judiciary. The former cricket captain can’t fathom the loss of his government in a vote of no confidence (the first Pakistani Prime Minister to lose government through a vote of no confidence). In the almost two months period, since he has lost his government, he has done almost everything to achieve his goal of forcing the government to announce the dissolution of assemblies and calling in an interim governmental set-up to organize early elections in 90 days. Imran Khan believes that the best chance he has of forming a new government and returning back as Prime Minister is by having the elections as early as possible since his popularity is increasing (in his personal assessment).
But the war of words especially with the military establishment is going to put the PTI in hot waters. This is the first time after the existence of PTI that it has been testing the waters by doing anti-establishment politics or politics of resistance. Anyone who is aware of Pakistani politics knows pretty well that the politics of resistance is supremely difficult and cumbersome in Pakistan.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf needs to do deep introspection and study Pakistan’s chequered and bloody political history. They need to study the different strategies adopted by other political parties after they have lost the government due to a multitude of reasons, at different times in the history of the country. It would be safe to say that PTI’s understanding of the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan (Perhaps the 1973 Constitution was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s biggest achievement) is pretty superficial. If it wasn’t perhaps, it would not have made the folly of dissolving the assemblies under article 5 of the Constitution, which was later declared illegal and invalid by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. The sort of jubilation and excitement expressed by the party in its first media interaction after the abolition of the assemblies demonstrates that many veteran politicians of the party don’t even understand and comprehend the Constitution of Pakistan.
One needs to remember that, Imran Khan is the luckiest of Pakistan’s political leaders in at least the last 40 years of our history. Politicians and human rights activists have been thrown into prisons for much lesser crimes. Remember what happened with Altaf Hussain, Nawaz Sharif, Ali Wazir, and others.
Going back to the reference of the Pakistan-India Test Match of 1987 and Javed Miandad convincing IK to select Iqbal Qasim instead of Abdul Qadir, can any of the senior-most leaders of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf namely Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Fawad Chaudhry, Shireen Mazari, Hammad Azhar, Shahbaz Gill or Dr. Babar Awan convince him to abort his confrontational and extra-constitutional style of politics (one counter-argument in this regard could be that all the dissenting voices in PTI are thrown out of the party, but if IK knows that someone is critical for the success of PTI he might not show him the door). This style of politics is not yielding any positive results for the party and is self-destructive not only for the party but the country as well. Can anyone in the party do a Javed Miandad and convince Imran Khan that the present tactics of politics are not going to succeed and are counterproductive. Whatever strategy PTI devises has to remain within the constitutional parameters. Politics is all about surviving to fight another day.
