The Chairman PTI has appointed me as Senior Media Consultant of the party with immediate effect. It is not only an honour and a responsibility but also a huge challenge.
It will take me a few days to get into the act. But before that I deem it necessary to state a few facts about myself and the nature of my assignment. Yes, it is more of an assignment than a job. In fact it is not at all a job. I have been a part of the party since long. Till about March 2012, I was an active member of the Core Group and the Central Executive Committee. The Chairman and the-then General Secretary PTI Dr. Arif Alvi were interested in me functioning as Information Secretary but because of my reluctance due to some unavoidable reasons I was mode Secretary Political Affairs which in effect was a non-functional post. Not meaning thereby that I was not functional.
I remember having enjoyed a Hollywood movie about six decades back. The title was “How The West Was Won.”
If I were to make a movie titled “How The KPK Was Won” I will recall all my memories of the number of journeys we had together in the KPK— me, Aamir Kayani, Sardar Azhar Tariq, Saifullah Niazi and off course our Captain Imran Khan. During these journeys the future of Pakistan was discussed in great detail. It was around that time that I came across a diehard ideological Insafain who today is Additional Secretary General of the party— Mr Arshad Dad— a well-indoctrinated activist in the cause of change.
It is accidental that my disappearance from the PTI limelight coincided with the surge of the PTI on the political scene after the induction of some heavyweights in the post-October 30, 2011 gathering in Lahore. It was a populist explosion of monumental proportions Nothing was to be the same again. That morning, while taking off to China on a pre-scheduled tour, Imran Khan texted to me four words that I still cherish. THANK YOU AKBAR BHAI.
It was not in recognition of any service that I had rendered. It was an expression of our common joy at being rewarded by Allah for IK’s DAUNTELESS STRUGGLES of which I had been an inspired observer.
The reason I faded away and out of the PTI scene was that my instincts were not harmonious with the quintessential requisites of crude & conventional politics personified in the likes of highly respectable Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Jahangir Tarin and some other luminaries of the same breed.
With IK I have remained welded for no other reasons than the ONE that was the Central Theme of his victory speech. “The State Of Medina”.
He is a visionary.
I am a dreamer.
He called me to Bani Gala on August 02, 2018. There were hundreds and hundreds there. But he found time to meet me. Arshad Dad was with me.
“So our common ideological pursuit has come to a defining moment”, said he embracing me.
“But Captain, Akbar Sahib should have a role in the future too. He has been a great inspiration”, said my friend Arshad Dad.
“Whatever he chooses,” said the Captain. “That is why he is here.”
I chose this role in the party. It will give me an opportunity to make the indomitable and incomparable Captain better-understood in the media— and through the media by those who are pinning their hopes on him, as well as those to whom his thumping victory hasn’t brought any joy.
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