Imran Khan started it all Now Pakistani leaders are facing shoe and ink
attacks REHAM KHAN 13 March, 2018
The slogan of Naya Pakistan brought with it a new rule — to
break all the rules of decency.
Our politicians must pay good attention to the age-old
proverb: What goes around comes around.
Back in 2014, the leader of the ‘party of protest’, the
cricket celeb Imran Khan, made Islamabad’s Red Zone (the city’s political and
diplomatic enclave) resemble an India-Pakistan match from his time.
As he lived in a shipping container and converted it into a
stage for months on end, a new precedent was set in Pakistani politics.
Unfiltered abuse was hurled at opponents in language unheard of before.
The skipper urged his fielders to grab Nawaz Sharif by the
collar and drag him out of the PM house. He made jokes about parliamentarians
wetting their pants because of the imminent threat of violence from his party
workers. He pledged to set fire from Karachi to Peshawar.
Since the celeb was courting me at the time, I made him
promise me that he would control his abusive language.
He agreed, but to my horror, I saw the government ministers
copying his style of name-calling and insults. I knew a couple of the leading
voices in this trend socially and had found them to be extremely decent
gentlemen otherwise. I couldn’t understand why they were speaking this
language, which had no place in our traditional political landscape.
I grew up in the eighties in Pakistan and even after a
popular prime minister was hanged, I never heard such overt nastiness. Even the
misogynistic attacks directed towards the heavily pregnant Benazir Bhutto as
she walked into the assembly in the nineties were frowned upon. Sharif’s
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N) conducted covert attacks but publicly
disowned this behaviour.
But, of course, the slogan of ‘Naya Pakistan’ brought with
it a new rule — to break all the rules of decency.
In the last couple of months, Pakistan interior minister
Ahsan Iqbal was greeted in his hometown with a shoe. Last week, the foreign
minister — the rather elderly Khwaja Asif — was, as he addressed an event,
doused in ink by a religious fanatic who had not forgiven the government for
the alleged blasphemous attempt to change the wording of the oath that an
election candidate has to take in the country.
And then, the very next day, despite the cover of his
protocol, Nawaz Sharif was attacked with a shoe at the Madrassa Naeemia, where
he had been invited.
I am pretty depressed by this disturbing trend of physical
attacks directed at some of the most heavily guarded, top figures in our
politics. I was so upset that I decided to not look at news for the rest of the
day.
By the end of the day, I found my phone flooded with yet
another video of another assault from close proximity. This time the victim was
the man who started it all.
Standing in the home constituency of the much-feared
Faislabadi politician Rana Sanaullah, Imran had roared that very day. He had
declared that the law minister and the fellow minister for power were both
dacoits. This time, Imran vowed to drag the Punjabi heavyweight Rana by his
imposing moustache into Adiala jail.
But at that very event, a man came close enough to the
loud-mouthed Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader to not only hit him with a
shoe but also slap him twice across the face, according to some reports.
The footage does show the perpetrator near the politician,
who is waving to the crowds as he stands in the open door of a vehicle. Then
there is a sudden frenzy as Imran is quickly forced back into the car while his
supporters spring into action. The perpetrator opens the door of the vehicle
and forces his way in. Several guards can be seen dragging the man out of the
car and then beating him up.
One can never be sure of what actually happened.
However, the security breach and the madness of the
perpetrators is a chilling reality. How could this be happening? And what would
happen next, I wonder. This is a country that witnessed the governor of Punjab
being shot by his own guard in broad daylight. This is a country where girls
are shot at point blank in their school buses. This nation is still haunted by
the footage of Benazir Bhutto being killed in front of her loving crowds.
We are a country facing the humiliation of being grey-listed
for a second time in recent years for failing to curb extremism. Our youth is
jobless and most have been recruited by the leading parties to swear at each
other uncontrollably on social media. This again is a trend regretfully started
by Imran’s PTI and followed by PML (N).
Ridiculous amounts of money are being poured in by both
parties into their social media cells. The result is untamed rage on Twitter
& Facebook.
My friends from across the border always say they find Urdu
very classy and romantic. It is the language of the nawabs, oozing formality,
decorum and timeless elegance. But the leaders of present-day Pakistan are far
from being classy or promoters of decorum. Their language is full of hate and
the rhetoric incites violence.
The result is what happened to Imran Khan. This is not just
an assault. It is a tight slap across the face of those who have been pushing
the boundaries in their desperation for power.
It is a warning of times to come. A time where no barrier
will stop an angry young man and no guard will be able to protect anyone from a
humiliatingly painful reminder that ‘what goes around comes around’.
My favourite proverb of all times is ‘nip it in the bud’.
The sooner we let the voice of reason prevail over the madness that surrounds
us, the better for all parties concerned.
Reham Khan is a journalist, child rights
activist, and single parent in Pakistan.
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