Henry Ford went broke five times before he was successful with the Ford Motor Company. Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Stephen King’s first novel “Carrie” was rejected 30 times by different publishers. Colonel Sanders (KFC baba ji) was turned down 1009 times before someone agreed to take up his chicken recipe. I can go on to list similar failures but then I would have overplayed the “never give-up” card just like Imran Khan did the “dhandhli” card.
At the moment, PTI azadi march seems to be heading down south unless Nawaz Sharif does something spectacularly stupid to rejuvenate the crowd and lift their mood. It was not unexpected as even before dharna began, many of the objective PTI supporters were skeptical of the idea for following reasons.
- After five years of PPP’s inactive or impotent rule (for any reason, be it judicial activism, alleged incompetence or corruption), the country is not in a good position to bear this upheaval.
- Public is perhaps not as much economically distressed as required to fuel a successful dharna.
- Public is not as much disturbed or concerned by the alleged “dhandhli” in 2013 elections and is therefore disconnected with the PTI strategy.
- If Zardari rule, despite being much more tarnished than the current PMLN government, was tolerated for five years then obviously Nawaz Sharif is facing a much less potent threat.
- Army is probably not very excited at the idea of an Imran Khan at the helm of affairs given his headstrong approach to enforce the civilian superiority.
- Imran Khan is surrounded mostly by sycophants and turncoats who will sacrifice him for their selfish gains.
- The PTI team is not experienced or trained enough to handle this kind of agitation.
- A better option would be to focus on showcasing the radical reforms implemented over the next four years.
However all is not lost and PTI can find its mojo back with a ruthless but an objective analysis of its disastrous strategy leading to this miserable failure is Islamabad.
“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” - Thomas Edison
Imran Khan should have realized by now that a dharna is probably not something that will be helpful in his attempts to dethrone the house of Sharif. A mature decision at this juncture would be to accept whatever reasonable concessions Nawaz Sharif offers on electoral reforms and take a face saving exit without making any stupid victory claims.
The PTI team should then go back to the drawing board, evaluate the sensible options at hand, talk to sincere and competent political advisors, and formulate a tranquil political strategy that does not serve only Imran Khan’s ambitions to become Prime Minister. The strategy should also respect the trust reposed in PTI by the youth and especially the KPK voters. They deserve better and even if that means Imran Khan resigning from National Assembly and taking up Chief Minister role in KPK, he should not hesitate. It will not hurt his image as a national leader to serve as a provincial leader first, before aiming at the country’s top post.
Let Nawaz Sharif’s incompetence be vehemently exposed in comparison to KPK growth story. Based on performance, people will naturally vote for PTI and take care of rigging themselves. If electoral failure still follows in rest of the country, then may be thugs is what they deserve. PTI or Imran Khan cannot do (and should not worry) much about it. However the current strategy will have to be revised as without leveraging the performance in KPK, PTI cannot expect different results than this azadi march.
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