Never Too Late

By S.R.H. Hashmi | July 2020

Most of us would have gone through the process. It would be based on starting our careers and progressing with the times. In the mean time, one would learn to cultivate an appropriate level of relations with the juniors, equals and seniors, interact with different people, alone and in groups, keep an open mind and acquire the ability to cooperate with others despite differences of opinion. One would also learn to develop the capacity to work as a team and rise to higher positions when fully prepared and ready.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Imran Khan missed this routine. What is worse, he even failed to learn in the 22 years that he spent waiting for the opportunity to lead Pakistan. He landed the position of the Prime Minister of a country like Pakistan – which is not easy to govern anyway - in a fairly raw condition, at the ripe old age of 66 when one’s habits become almost second nature, making adaptation difficult, if not impossible. But then, he is not the only one who missed this opportunity. Many of our politicians started with similar backgrounds, but they succeeded because they started early and made serious efforts to learn.

Remember the stellar performance of Zlulfiqar Ali Bhutto who swept West Pakistan polls so soon after his party’s launch, while Imran Khan, after over two decades’ struggle, barely managed a slim majority, and that too, with support from some coalition partners.

Starting with so many limitations was bound to take its toll. We saw how, during his rare visits to the parliament, Imran Khan made deliberate attempts to avoid shaking hands with opposition politicians.

It is a fact that on the issue of dealing with Covid-19, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah made a far better start as compared to other provinces for which he even received well-deserved international acclaim. Unfortunately, it proved just too much for Imran Khan to bear and he started a campaign against Murad Ali Shah, supported by some of his lieutenants, bitterly criticizing and terming his lockdown elitist and anti-poor. He kept up the onslaught even when his own governments in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa took the same measures as introduced earlier by the Sindh CM. It was because of strict measures introduced by Murad Ali Shah and followed by other provinces, that infections in the early stages remained low throughout the country, despite initial mishandling of the ‘zaireen’ at Taftan and at international airports.

Imran Khan’s basic stand has been that a poor country like Pakistan cannot afford lockdowns because a large proportion of its workers like daily wagers, small shop owners and their assistants, etc. would lose their earnings and die of starvation rather than from Covid-19, in circumstances when the government could not sustain them indefinitely because of its meager resources. While Imran Khan’s stand is not entirely devoid of merit, what he seems to miss is that because of living in over-crowded conditions and having low immunity due to mal-nutrition, such persons were most vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19.

All things considered, of course the right approach for Pakistan would have been to strike a balance and adopt a middle course, meaning easing the lockdown while strictly following the standard operating procedures (SOPs). Asad Umar did announce a policy to that effect.

Unfortunately, Imran Khan and his mouthpieces presented the easing of lockdown as the vindication of his stance against lockdowns. In fact, going a step further, they interpreted even the easing of conditions in Europe and the United States as the ultimate acceptance of Imran Khan’s ‘vision’ by these countries. Of course, they did not care to mention the fact that the easing of lockdowns in the West came essentially at a time when the Covid-19 curve had flattened or was very near to it, whereas in our country, it is rising steeply.

The Sindh CM used to allow only the mosque committee members to offer prayers in the mosques, with additional three-hour complete lockdowns on Fridays, to prevent crowding in the mosques for Friday prayers. This practice was quite in line with Islamic injunctions and was followed by Saudi Arabia and most Muslim countries. However, the Pakistan President met a delegation of maulvis and in the presence of other officials, but excluding any medical experts, made an agreement for traveeh and regular prayers in mosques while observing SOPs. Now, with many of our half-baked maulvis suggesting larger than usual congregations in the mosques in order to beg forgiveness from God, there was little chance of the SOPs being followed. In fact, a credible survey conducted in many cities disclosed that in as many as eighty percent of the mosques, the SOPs were partially or completely ignored.

Imran Khan also declared that mosques played absolutely no role in the spread of Covid-19, and described the earlier relatively lower figures of infections as blessings of Allah Almighty and as a sort of reward for Pakistan being the only Islamic country that allowed traveeh prayers in mosques during Ramzan. This included his team’s ‘sound’ assessment of the situation and the right decisions in consequence. Of course, there is no denying God, or else how could this country have survived for so long despite the leadership it has had in the past many decades? However, the lower infections earlier were due to strict measures taken by the Sindh CM and followed even in the provinces ruled by PTI.

Our carefree public took a mile when given an inch in the Eid shopping days. This is now producing stark figures like over 100 deaths and 5,000 infected a day and rising. The statistics have made many of our officials lose their complacency – and cool. As a result, the government had no recourse but to revert to complete lockdowns, though in selected areas. Imran Khan may seem a bit perturbed by this but the rising number of infected persons and fatalities is alarming. It is late in the day but the Prime Minister has acceded to a major course correction and this is heartening.

Unfortunately, Imran Khan’s unwillingness or perhaps inability to adapt necessitates a drastic change in the political setup or at least a significant redistribution of power between different power sectors.