The former cricket captain and prime minister of Pakistan, who enjoyed a popularity matched only by the aristocratic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the revered founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, has been arrested and will now be serving three years in jail.
Bhutto, a man who at once was the vote of the masses, a man who could use the filthiest abuse fit for a hoodlum when angry, a man who was an open serial womanizer, a man who at times was akin to an elected dictator and yet never lost support, even after being executed in a thoroughly inglorious fashion, people continue to remember him when he was a luminary and not as just another sybaritic Third World leader. A close look at Imran’s trajectory and one is compelled to feel as if the same pen which wrote Bhutto’s fate is then being used for Imran as well. He and Bhutto have the same dynamic as the Rolling Stones were to The Beatles. The Stones were considered the sober successors to the more saccharine Beatles when in truth, both enjoyed similar lifestyles.
Maybe it helps that he is exceptionally charismatic, a point that helped him recover from so many blows which would have capitulated a lesser man and even burnish the fortunes of his own founded party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, eventually handing him the keys to the prime ministerial office for the four tumultuous years of 2018-2022, which most notoriously involved surviving an assassination attempt, common to men serving in his capacity, as has been witnessed in the cases of John F Kennedy, Yitzhak Rabin, Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and the list goes on.
Toshakhana, which is basically the administrative department recording the gifts received by public officials has proved to be the fateful spear that may have finally pierced the seemingly Achillesque Imran Khan’s heel. The erroneous declarations that he made about the ones he received, for example a luxury watch by the Saudi Crown Prince, although he paid for them. In layman language, the transactions in themselves were not illegal, it is how he advertised them was what is now his undoing.
The man now finds himself in prison shackles, but his now trademark exuberance hasn’t dimmed. He went on to claim that his party would sweep the next elections and whatever the opposition was planning against him was just adding to his lustre.
Well, if not through the bat, maybe Imran will still deliver on the pitch. He has a knack for pulling tricks out of the proverbial magician’s hat and surviving all these onslaughts. He has done it before, who knows what happens this time?