A stalwart in the face of a mess

‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ This saying aptly captures Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s remarkable feat of defenestrating the farce that the PTI government was. On February 27, the world watched in awe—millions said a prayer for their safety—as the Daughter of Destiny’s children, Bilawal and Aseefa, mounted her truck marred with the tragic memories of October 18, 2007 to reconstruct their country’s destiny by ridding it of an incompetent regime; a regime that has robbed citizens of necessities as basic as roti, kapra and makaan. What threw the former Prime Minister’s off balance and eventually out of office was the vote of no confidence propounded by the PPP Chairman since September 2020: the motion for it submitted with the National Assembly at the conclusion of his arduous ten-day march from Karachi to Islamabad and brought to fruition by former President Asif Ali Zardari’s astute politics, credibility and restoration of the constitution of Pakistan in April 2010.
On April 3, it was clear as daylight that Imran Khan had lost confidence of the august House. In place of an honourable exit, he and his abettors chose to defile the constitution and attempt to disenfranchise the representatives of the majority of the population. That he became the first Prime Minister in the country’s history to be voted out through the Parliament on the Constitution Day, also the anniversary of Shaheed Mohtarmah Benazir Bhutto’s glorious homecoming to Lahore in 1986 to fight Zia’s brutal dictatorship is redolent of divine retribution. It is hurtful to witness the ignominious fall of Pakistan’s cricketing legend.
His is a politics based on deception, deflection and disruption. ‘35 Punctures’ was the catchword when PTI could not win general elections in 2013; a fabrication about rigging peddled without remorse that held the functioning of the state hostage for four months and led to attacks on the Parliament House and Pakistan Television. Come 2022. As soon as his numerical support for office withered, Khan resorted to shamanistic incantation of a foreign conspiracy bankrolled by American dollars to dislodge his government. Identical to the ‘Pizza-gate’ launched during the 2016 US Presidential election to tarnish the Clinton campaign, the ‘Letter-gate’ connects its targets—everyone who sits on the other side of the aisle—to acts of bribery and treachery.
The conspiracy theory about foreign conspiracy is replete with contradictions, but so are the rest of Imran Khan’s claims. He promised to ‘drain the swamp’ and recover the nation’s looted money but his anti-corruption campaign concealed a vindictive agenda. ‘Do nahi, aik Pakistan’ was PTI’s rallying cry but the huts of the poor were demolished and bungalows of the rich regularised. Khan waxed lyrical about the British parliamentary system but converted Pakistan’s Parliament into a madhouse and ruled by decree.
The abandonment of reason, contempt for rule of law and degeneration of promising men and women into a mob is a recipe for national disaster. We must defend our institutions to avert it. The 33-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has shown us how it is done by spearheading the movement to oust Imran Khan’s regime constitutionally, legally, democratically and peacefully—through the same Parliament that installed him in power in the first place.
The heir of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto has shown Imran Khan the door. Now, we must support him to weed out his noxious brand of politics from our country. Long Live Pakistan!