By General Mirza Aslam Beg
Sunday, the 17th June 2019, was eventful, as ground realities converged at a tipping point where the Two Captains Imran and Sarfraz stood facing difficult situations. The opposition parties led by Mariam and Bilawal met to work-out the strategy for the movement against the sitting government. They are young like their parents Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto / Zardari, who were at the helm of affairs during the 1980/90s, with whom I have the honour to serve. They both are in jail and at the seat of power is Imran Khan – “the mystery man” expected to define the contours of his strategy for governance. At the same time, Captain Sarfraz met his Waterloo at the Manchester battle field. This is a complex situation, which I have been trying to understand.
Being perplexed at the unexpected happenings and accustomed to reading sermons of government functionaries, who proclaimed: “To change the destiny of Pakistan’s 220 million people, I wish, it was in our hands hanging 5000 people today Faisal”, and to top it up — “We will put all the corrupt in jail – Imran.”
It was rather shocking to realize that perhaps ‘holocaust’ was going to happen here. I, therefore decided to look to the other side of the clog and found enough breathing space to set me thinking about today’s comments in English and Urdu dailies, by our eminent analysts and opinion makers:
Captain Imran
- “Almost single-handedly Imran gate-crashed the two parties system closed club, and flung them out of power and forged the burning issue of Corruption to become his rallying cry.
- “He opened his arm to the fold of fickle and not-so-fickle minded electables, who had sniffed success and eagerly joined PTI stable.
- “The responsibility with power’ demand is getting heavy on Imran to test his ability at governance.
- “Having defaulted at various levels, instead of being sagacious, Imran decided to open new fronts and chose to fight-single handedly.
- “The mantle of corruption became his armour to demolish his opponents, whereas the courts of justice and accountability courts existed to do the same.
- “The federal budget has opened a new controversy of ‘IMF Dictations’ that would result into high prices, inflation and misery for the low-income group.
- The Chief Justice of Pakistan is “dismayed to find the economy in ICU, and the news from elsewhere is depressing.”
- “A new political culture of defamation and demonizing each other has developed unabated, sapping grace and dignity of the democratic order. Thus the ‘cultured electable’ are not coming forward to assist Imran and the lot he collected as his team, as he needs them now when he is in trouble, they also are not coming forward.
- “Imran also miscalculated the extent of Pakistan’s problems and his team’s ability to resolve them.
- “By putting Nawaz Sharif and Zardari in jail, Imran claimed to have demolished the dynastic rule in Pakistan, yet the youthful Mariam and Bilawal are on their march towards Islamabad.
- “The original narrative of PTI as the Neat and Clean party also lay trampled.
- “PTI will do well to accept its shortcomings than blaming others for self-created problems.”
“The fault is not in their stars, but in themselves” because, the Captains of our Cricket teams have very limited responsibility.
They are given a ready-made team to lead. The pitch is prepared by some-one else; selectors pick-up the players to form the team; the coach trains them into the techniques of batting, bowling and fielding and the Board selects the Captain, who wins the toss, but someone else decides, either to play or to field. But politics is a different ball game altogether.
Study the struggle, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto launched to form his party, which still exists strong, despite brutalization by despotic rulers. It has a soul of its own which cannot be trampled or swapped away. Imran’s dilemma is that he is heading a political party with its soul shrouded under the mystique of its master.
Captain Sarfraz
In today’s newspapers, his picture appeared, as if he was yawning behind the wickets. In fact, he was not yawning, but that is his mode of expression of his feelings, you will see on his face under different conditions:
- When he catches the ball behind the wickets and the umpires’ finger goes-up, he exults.
- When he is angry at his players, for bad fielding, he fumes.
- When he is happy with a player like Amir, dashing to knock-off the wickets of a player like Rohit Sharma, he is jubilant.
Cricket is a very challenging game, where unexpected happen as it did last night. I had a bet with my grand-daughter, that our team will win, but as I saw the ‘wuthering heights’ of our team crashing humpty-dumpty, I switched-off the TV and went to sleep. She woke me up passed midnight and claimed her bet.
Captain Sarfraz was not yawning. He was showing his anger at the selectors, who had mocked-up a team, which could not stand under pressure. Even Imran could not help tweet the message to Sarfraz: “Take care of the Relokatas”. Whatever he meant by Relokatas, I don’t know. Forget it. Relax. Follow the tale of two Captains, in the dock and wait for the fog to lift, and Naya Pakistan image to emerge.