Skipper Imran Khan has been declared out. It is now up to his team to score a win. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan is back in the pavilion. Khan—due to appear in court—was arrested in dramatic fashion by Pakistan Rangers outside the Islamabad High Court on Tuesday.
A video of the arrest released by the PTI on Twitter shows 70-year-old Khan sitting in a room in dark glasses where he was due to record his biometrics when paramilitary officers dressed in riot-control gear broke the window to nab him. They are then seen taking Khan into a van.
“Rangers abducted PTI Chairman Imran Khan, these are the visuals. Pakistan’s brave people must come out and defend their country,’’ PTI tweeted. According to media reports, Khan’s lawyers as well as his security guards were beaten up before the arrest. Khan’s arrest has pushed the battle now onto the streets.
Khan has been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB)—ironically, his to-go agency to arrest opposition leaders on corruption charges—in the Al-Qadir Trust case. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, have been protecting Bahria Town (an Islamabad-based real estate company) in a money laundering case in exchange of Rs 5 billion and hundreds of kanals (of land). These are not the only corruption charges Khan is facing.
Khan has been banking on his street credibility and popularity to push for early elections. So, far, he has not managed.
Khan’s arrest—which had been imminent—and effectively puts an end to the year-long public confrontation that the PTI supremo has had with the powerful Establishment, read military. It has set him on a collision course against the most powerful elements of Pakistan. It was an inevitability that Khan seems to have prepared for, and has been setting the stage for.
Just before he set off to Islamabad, Khan put out a video telling his supporters that he was due to appear in court, hitting out against the intelligence operator who he claimed had tried to assassinate him twice. Khan came out against the ISPR full guns blazing saying that respect belonged to every citizen. “This is my Pakistan,’’ he said.
Going against the rules of the game, Khan has repeatedly held the establishment responsible for the gun attack on him in November. “For one and a half months before [my shooting], I was warning that this is what is going to happen,” Khan said in an interview with Time magazine. “I told them that they will bump me off and blame a religious fanatic. Because I was in power for three and a half years and, from within the intelligence agencies, they would give me this information. So now, (my supporters) outside (my home) believe that if they arrest me, they will kill me.”
At a rally in Lahore, where Khan spoke from his bulletproof vehicle over the weekend, he repeated his allegations. “Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)'s Major-General Faisal Naseer tried to kill me twice. He is also involved in the killing of (TV anchor) Arshad Sharif. He also stripped my party Senator Azam Swati naked and inflicted severe torture on him," he said. On Monday, the ISPR issued a statement claiming that Khan had made “baseless allegations."
With his supporters out on the streets—water cannons have been used—the battle has now shifted to the road. The question is whether, PTI will be able to sustain it. The Punjab elections are due to be held on May 14—again the date fixed through the Supreme Court stepping in—where Khan seems ready to make inroads into the PMNL stronghold. He will again, be hoping his supporters vote on the street with their feet and at the polls too.
For now, the situation is tense. And as the foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said in an interview: “Unfortunately, Pakistan is facing a perfect storm. Not only do we have heightened partisanship and political polarisation, to the extent that political parties or political stakeholders aren't even in a position to sit in a room and discuss issues amongst themselves, we're also facing an economic crisis."
