The controversial tweet by Imran Khan referred to in this article in The News, reflects, in my opinion, two things. One, Imran Khan’s stance that politics is not a struggle between competing worldviews but a struggle between good and evil, with he himself and PTI conveniently being good and whoever their opponent happens to be being evil. For instance when in 2016 Mian Nawaz Sharif was the most popular leader and PMLN the largest party, PTI equated Mian Nawaz Sharif with Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rahman and branded him a traitor (it being “understood” by PTI then that Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rahman was a traitor to Pakistan even though he had won the elections). Fast forward to 2024 and Imran Khan is the most popular leader and PTI is the largest party, today Imran Khan and PTI see that Sheikh Mujeeb-ur-Rahman and Awami League too had won the elections and so now they find Yahya Khan to be the traitor and were trying to affix this label to the current army leadership. The point being that whoever Imran Khan and PTI consider their main opponent is labelled by them as traitors.

This brings me to the second factor that made this Imran Khan tweet possible. It is the ability of Imran Khan and PTI to only focus on one truth and to ignore, reject or deny all other facts. For instance, PTI rightly sees the current government as being favoured by the establishment. But it ignores that they too were favoured by the establishment between 2012 to 2021. They forget who sponsored their dharna in 2014 and why was TLP nurtured and their own role in undermining the democratic space in Pakistan and putting political opponents in jail. But now that the shoe is on the other foot, they find establishment’s involvement in politics to be all wrong and not just wrong but to be treacherous.

There is much that is wrong with our politics. And all parties have been guilty of making mistakes and being on the wrong side of democracy. But to ease the hardships faced by our citizens everyday we have to move forward and improve governance. And this cannot be done by labelling opponents as traitors but by sitting across the table with them.

All parties have honourable and decent people and all parties have some shady characters. People such as Ali Mohammad Khan, Gohar Khan, my dear friend Salman Akram Raja and Shah Mohammad Qureshi and his children Zain and Meher Bano Qureshi (no, nepotism doesn’t apply here) are honourable, decent people in PTI. But there are also some shady characters in PTI that I won’t name, but in their heart of hearts friends from PTI also know the people I am talking about.

So best policy for all political parties (and they have all been guilty of it at times) is not to give certificates of patriotism and religiosity to others but to focus on the political and economic problems faced by the people. Let me again say that even though I don’t support PTI, I do believe that it won the elections and is the largest party today. But also that it was happy and proud to be supported by the establishment in the past.