EDITORIAL: It seems the whole regime-change edifice of Imran Khan is about to collapse as it is crumbling brick by brick. The latest blow to it was delivered by the Foreign Office on last Tuesday.
Commenting on Khan’s former special assistant Shahbaz Gill’s claim that the cipher from ambassador in Washington on the eve of vote of no-confidence was not shown to the then prime minister and foreign minister Qureshi, is nothing but a baseless claim, said the FO spokesman.
“Such a question simply doesn’t arise,” he told a questioner, adding the Foreign Office operates on professional basis and it would be detrimental to cast aspersions on its working. Both the Supreme Court and military setup have already rebuffed the much-touted PTI leadership’s claim that Khan’s worldview doesn’t sit well with the United States and it was Washington which conspired to move vote of no-confidence against him so as to make its “slaves” the country’s future rulers.
Is there anything else — of course there was President Joe Biden’s reluctance to talk to Imran Khan — in hand that the United States wanted regime change in Pakistan.
If Pakistan’s cooperative relationship with China was the cause of American annoyance with Imran Khan then what about now when that very relationship is fast recovering its initial warmth and Washington is not perturbed.
It increasingly appears that the entire ‘conspiracy’ to oust Imran Khan was homegrown. As a government he was more a talk than an act, and thus the lingering plight of masses refused to be lifted. His seductive electoral pledges remained an ever-receding mirage. And instead of being an elected ruler Imran Khan operated more like a king.
How ironic it is that he rarely graced parliament, which elected him as prime minister of Pakistan, with his presence. According to knowledgeable sources, the cabinet meetings were ‘classrooms with ministers being Imran’s pupils’.
The ministers could only say ‘yes’ to whatever he proposed. No wonder then he invited his opponents to overlook their contentious pasts and join hands to overthrow his government — an act partly facilitated by some of his own party members of National Assembly.
The ciphers are part of normal state business. It is unthinkable that this particular cipher was not placed on the tables of Imran Khan or his foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. As per the norm, such ciphers were also shown to the army chief and ISI DG, and they too didn’t detect any conspiracy germ in this cipher.
Be that as it may, after Sri Lanka and Zambia defaulted on their sovereign reserves and are also left with no forex reserves, Pakistan could be among the next lot of countries to face a difficult time. The rating agencies’ forecast should be an eye-opener for all the Pakistanis, including Imran Khan.
Pakistan is a sovereign state, as is Sri Lanka, but on the ground the realities dictate their own terms for give-and-take cooperative relationship with rest of the world.
Being part of that cooperative ambience doesn’t mean that we have reduced our status to slaves. It is call of the time that the PTI should return to the National Assembly and be part of the debate on its floor to put up a unified national approach to the challenges presently confronting Pakistan.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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