Because Imran said so

The social media rush that shares the front line with Imran Khan’s legions on the streets in his war against everybody else will, sooner or later, force a rethink of the limits of the ethics that uphold free speech as sacrosanct in a working democracy. And that, in turn, is bound to force a revision of relevant laws of the land.

Conventionally, there’s no doubt at all that the move to rob him of airtime reeks of fascism. But the law is silent, more or less, about online vilification of anybody and everybody that dares deny this one person the right to be judge, jury and executioner and he will not hold back when it comes to colourful adjectives, even threats, even when it’s a female judge that he’s inciting violence against as he exercises his right to free speech. So what’s the state to do?

Especially when he snaps his fingers and thousands line up to nod in slavish approval, no matter how much he chooses to stretch the truth. He told CNN that cabinet, the national security council, army and foreign office were given a look at the cable he blames for the conspiracy that threw him out, when asked he was so certain. It’s just that all of those institutions flatly rejected his claim, but that made no difference to his narrative or his adjectives; or, for that matter, to the slavish approval. And he said with a perfectly straight face that Shahbaz Gill’s medical report confirmed torture when he dragged the female judge into his speech, and effectively green-lighted online (and perhaps on ground) assaults on her, even though the report clearly ruled out torture.

There’s more.

This is a democracy, remember, and his narrative is selling. Empirically, at least, enough people in 20 provincial seats in Punjab and one national assembly seat in Karachi believe in it, no questions asked, to give the government the shivers. Yet there’s also the point that the latest noise, which erupted after Gill’s controversial comments and arrest, has buried the real question of whether or not PTI was complicit in trying to fiddle with the forces to bolster its narrative, etc., or if this was just a misfire from an over-eager musketeer.

This is where the most serious questions arise.

PTI is clearly not going to settle for anything that goes against it or its chairman’s chief of staff. It’s made that much clear enough. But a line was clearly crossed. And somebody will have to pay for it. And if you’re the state you need to think of what happens if the investigation, and even the courts, find against Gill and PTI responds by mobilizing its hyper-advertised revolution. Worse still, what if all this is really connected to Imran, and the long arms of the law come for him, and he mixes his usual venom with his more usual touch of jihad and Madina and even shirk to call for a Turkey like confrontation on the streets?

It’s another thing altogether that Turkey was completely different and the only people PTI diehards will find on the streets is themselves, no coup. But that’s a story for another day.

When you look at it, it’s nothing but Imran’s right to practice free speech, and his followers’ obsession with amplifying its contents on the internet absolutely blindly, that is responsible for 90 percent of the poison in politics and almost a hundred percent of the paralysis in the market. Not much has improved, but a lot of people, which now include judges and very senior police officials, have become fair game in Imran’s anger at being removed and replaced by people he considers beneath him.

How the Islamabad High Court’s (IHC’s) notice of his belligerence against the judge unfolds will tell a lot. If the past is any guide, he’ very likely to tender an unqualified apology as soon as he feels completely cornered and then spew a little extra venom on the system in his next public speech to make up for it; with his supporters believing the gospel truth, of course. Let’s not forget that it’s this right that’s also earned him the privilege to dub anybody that differs with him a traitor and even an infidel, with his followers ready to hound them wherever and whenever in their quest for Imran’s ‘Riyasat-e-Madina’.

Pakistan’s politics never stood out for its chivalry, but it’s now descended to a shameless, merciless zero-sum game like never before. And, like it or not, this thing about free speech and all that is the cancer at the heart of it. It would have been fine if people weighed what they heard and saw and then decided whether or not to fill the streets. But as in so, so many examples of fanatic cult following over the centuries all over the world, this is not about principles but about personality.

Let’s see what the court decides about the line that it was alright and everybody should fall in line and even the law should fall silent just because Imran said so.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022