The only obstacle to building a new Pakistan is the old Pakistan
Imran Khan, cricket titan and now populist prime minister-elect of Pakistan, has swept to power with a resounding mandate. The polls were overshadowed by terrorist attacks, widespread allegations of poll rigging and accusations that Khan enjoys the covert support of the country’s powerful military.
But while his triumph will be disputed, it was a vote of desperate hope, a plea for change.
In the immediate future Khan must unite a fractured, polarised society and face down claims of election rigging. He must also somehow play the military if he wants to implement aspects of his policy, such as closer ties with arch-rival India.
More importantly, he needs to decide what sort of Pakistan he envisages: one that respects the country’s diversity, desire for peace, progress and wealth; or one that panders to hawkish Islamist, nationalist, conservative tendencies and sees itself through the prism of conflict.
During Khan’s speech declaring victory, many noticed that on the wall behind him hung a portrait of a youthful Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father.
Khan referred to him in his address, saying he had entered politics because “I wanted Pakistan to become the country that my leader Quaid-i-azam (“Great Leader”) Mohammad Ali Jinnah had dreamed of ”.
The least remarkable thing about Jinnah is that he ate pork, drank whisky and smoked 50 Craven “A” a day. More notable is that almost through sheer bloody-mindedness he created a nation-state.
He was born to a middle-class Gujarati-speaking family of provincial merchants from the Shia Khoja minority. He was urbane, aloof, anglicised and mad about Shakespeare. He wouldn’t have had much truck with Khan and conservative modern Sunni Pakistan’s intolerance of communities such as the Ahmadi. Nor would he support, as Khan does, the death sentence for transgressors of its blasphemy law.
After Pakistan’s creation in 1947, Jinnah told his countrymen: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan.
“You may belong to any religion, caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
But Pakistan has drifted way off course since then. If Khan wants to get it back on track, he has the weight of the last 70 years against him.
The performance of corrupt civilian governments dominated by the feudal class has played into the hands of the military and Islamists.
Corruption charges have become little more than levers to be used to effect a change of government – one half of the political class has enriched itself while the other half, temporarily in jail, waits its turn.
The challenges Khan faces are formidable. But he has already fulfilled one pledge: he has broken the decades-old stranglehold of the country’s tarnished Sharif and Bhutto dynasties. He has taken the first step to building his “New Pakistan”.
Only the old Pakistan can stop him.