Imran Khan wants to change the System -- the very country and how its run. This will help all of us become true sovereigns of our fates, he assures, rather than the modern-day slavery he contends most of us are shackled in. It will certainly help him become the emancipator-in-chief. His politics, however, is peculiarly aimed at first becoming the prime minster before much of this happens rather than acquiring a critical mass of collaborative politics to change the System. So his grand visions for Pakistan keep running afoul of the parallel visions of his fellow travellers in politics who all want the same thing. The difference between how various representative forces go about their grand projects is their politics.

You can’t empower people without politics. And it is in a functional democracy that multiple contenders for representation of people’s interests have a fair chance of pleading support for competing manifestos and lobby for adequate public support -- via elections -- to implement them. It is, then, through this support you legitimise your access to and control of state resources to implement your endorsed agendas. And start serving and empowering people to take control of their fates and fortunes.

Technically that is how you change the System.

That’s good enough in theory but democracies can be faulty and both policy and practice of representative systems can be inadequate enough to not fully translate this theory into a critical mass of implementation that satisfies enough people to want them to continue. Provided there are no ‘sharks’ -- forces that have a nefarious interest in the power stakes that is not legitimate -- to muddy up the political waters.

 Special interests vs common benefits

It is also through politics that one has to contend and manage challenges engendered by these kinds of ‘sharky’ variables - such as the military Establishment in Pakistan that has traditionally co-opted other key state pillars in varying partnerships (both benign and coercive) to undermine both the legitimacy and capacity of representative parties -- to apply themselves to the ancient human mission to organise themselves efficiently for optimum benefit.

The Big Battle between Pakistan’s political groups that courageously submit themselves periodically to public accountability, and special-interest forces unwilling to be accountable despite the disproportionate influence they wield, is as ancient as Pakistan itself.

This is the System Imran Khan’s political rivals have to contend with on a daily basis. The forces that Imran Khan sees as the enemy are not just fighting this Big Battle that is not even part of their formal TORs as they go about protecting their legitimacies that are constantly under attack while running the country and/or provinces under their domain, but are also doing their bit to change the System. This is the context in which Imran Khan’s politics needs to be measured.

Notwithstanding the relevancy and fairness of Imran Khan’s demands for a more transparent, fairer electoral system, his politics of how to achieve these objectives cannot be seen exclusive of this historical backdrop. Or how, in its impact, it fits into the ground nexuses that categorise parties as willing or unwilling abettors of the agendas of powerful non-political and non-representative forces, and those that have built a history of resisting, according to their varying capacities, unholy nexuses.

It is astonishing who Imran Khan -- an admittedly legitimate political force with his seven million voters -- considers as his enemies, the PML-N and PPP. These parties have historically demonstrated the ability to get and retain the critical mass of public support and votes to fight the Big Fight that people want them to.

 Hard fought spaces for reforms

The disproportionate freedoms of Imran Khan to say whatever he wants or do -- from laying sieges to running over state buildings, from vitriolising state institutions to threatening state functionaries, and from scorning his own parliamentary mandate to threatening to soil the mandates of others by bringing life to a halt in the political domains of others -- is audacious. The political space in which this can happen is the space his very declared enemies have fought hard to save, enlarge and consolidate -- and made available to their political rivals -- with a great deal of determination, guile and sacrifice in battles he has never fought.

Imran Khan seems to want to change the System for change’s sake rather than for the System. He wants action without having to deal with the consequences. He wants reforms by throwing the System out without working within it to reform it. He fails to see this is the way of the establishment: throw the System out and force down one-way reforms without mandate, without legitimacy. He wants elections that can make him prime minister without helping reform the process under which the elections will be held.

His spectacular failure to seize a historic opportunity to pilot the process of radical electoral reforms (from instituting a fairer caretaker administration to a more transparent, independent and procedurally efficient election system) through the Parliament proves he is neither a visionary nor even a team player.

In Pakistan’s parliamentary democracy, whichever way you cut it, you can’t become prime minister without first converting your support into votes, your votes into seats in the National Assembly, and your seats into a simple majority of 172 -- whether alone or in a coalition. Imran Khan succeeded in doing only the first -- converting his support into votes. He failed to convert his votes into enough seats to be within even a shot of the magical number 172.

The PPP garnered generally the same number of votes as PTI did and just a few seats more. But the difference between the two -- and between the PTI and PML-N -- is that Imran Khan is a political exclusivist while the others are not. What he deridingly labels as muk-muka is actually at play a collaborative wisdom among historic political rivals who have worked hard at great cost to their (and people’s) leaders to expand the political space for all political players.

 Rejectionist ideologies and inclusivist politics

Politics in Pakistan’s hyper pluralist polity with its competing nationalistic, ethnic, linguist, religious, sectarian and economic interests, is not possible without inclusivity. Through his rejectionist ideology and politics of exclusivity - at the pinnacle of his 20-year politics with a historic mandate in National Assembly to champion and pilot a second generation of political reforms - Imran Khan has all but lost his Golden Moment to build on the political dividends from the Charter of Democracy (that strengthened the political parties in the Big Battle) and the 18th Amendment (that decentralised power as a detriment to non-representative forces).

How to change the System? The difference in the politics of Imran Khan and the likes of PPP and PML-N couldn’t be starker: the latter are building common ground in pushing back against the tribe of self-appointed umpires while Imran Khan’s politics revolves around employing means to create a one-team competition. He wants to be petitioner, judge, jury and executioner.

This rejectionist, exclusivist approach only suits the Establishment (does he really think they will make him their commander-in-chief) and takes Pakistan back to the 1990s when political parties failed to capitalise on the window of opportunity, opened up by the falling of a plane from the sky, for a united fight against those who feed on disunity and thrive on chaos.

Imran Khan’s political rivals have been in this game much longer than he has. He will have to learn to share the burden of historic responsibility of collaborative politics in a multi-pluralistic polity by learning to trust that not everyone who doesn’t vote for him is an enemy.

Politics is about making friends. You can’t make friends with anger and bitterness. And without friends you will not be able to change the System to people’s benefit.