Once, during a journey in KPK, while discussing matters related to the National Affairs, Imran Khan said with a tinge of mournful bitterness in his voice: “Politics is such a cruel business! I have to embrace people whom I wouldn’t have shaken hands with otherwise.”
This was more than seven years ago— a few months after the defining public meeting on October 30, 2011.
These words explain his dilemma. The more he moved into his role as the head of a political party from the founder of an ideological movement, the more acute became this dilemma. And then as the circle of ‘politicians’ around him started to expand, this dilemma evaporated into the reality of political life.
A number of politicians joined hands with him from various past backgrounds, but four of them were of great significance. Among them Javed Hashmi was quick to pass into history. Shah Mahmood Qureshi is the Vice Chairman of the party and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister. Jahangir Tareen is in the shadows because of his disqualification, but still quite influential in the process of decision-making in the books of IK. Asad Umar is the one whose current position I am neither aware of, nor can authoritatively define.
He rose in the party ranks instantly, and I personally know how high was he held in IK’s esteem. His USP was that he had drawn monthly salary of Rs. 5.7 million in Engro before quitting that multinational, and subsequently joining the PTI. I have borrowed the term USP from the Language of Marketing to which Asad Umar belonged. It is the abbreviation of UNIQE SELLING POINT.
In my opinion the figure of 5.7 million as monthly salary of a person in Pakistan is not just astronomical; it is also sinister. It stinks with various possibilities. Being aware of the practice of the Multinational Corporations or Companies to engage or hire persons at fabulous prices, I don’t regard this USP as something Asad Umar should be proud of. It only says he is a brilliant person with a lot of ‘usefulness’ in the Corporate sense.
That this ‘brilliance’ and ‘usefulness’ couldn’t rise to the nature and the level of IK’s expectations is well-known to all. What however is not known is what went wrong, and how and when.
Since his dramatic tweet that announced his resignation from the cabinet, Asad Umar has became an enigma. A mystery that will be resolved only when Asad Umar’s next political move unfolds.
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