By Shazia Anwer Cheema
One of my colleagues from Islamabad enquired comments over the press conference Khawar Manika held on Tuesday in Islamabad who is the ex-husband of former First Lady of Pakistan– Bushra Bibi. I politely refused to remark stating that Manika was washing his dirty linen in public and I did not want to listen to what he said but I can only comment that he is one of those who do not learn any lesson from history.
The person about whom Khawar is leveling charges of illicit relations with his wife is one who had been known as a man of low character and several testimonies are available claiming that Imran Khan has no morality when the matter of sexual relations comes. The book of his former wife Reham Khan is full of stories of the weird sexual nature of Imran Khan while the video statement of his former girlfriend Sita White indicates what kind of a person he is who is the biological father of White’s daughter who now lives with his ex-wife Jemima Goldsmith but she is still undocumented and unclaimed daughter of Imran Khan.
Related Story: Video of Sita White accusing Imran Khan he is father of her daughter
Imran Khan lost the case in a US court in August 1997, the court ruled that Imran Khan is the father of a five-year child of Sita White who filed a lawsuit claiming Khan’s paternity over her daughter Tyrian-Jade. White demanded Khan apologize to the Pakistani people for misleading them during the election campaign that he had no children before he married Jemima Goldsmith.
Related Story: Download Reham Khan Book
I wonder why Manika who is a former bureaucrat forgot the ethical and moral background of Imran Khan before inviting him to his residence till such time his wife demanded divorce from him for marrying Imran Khan leaving her daughters and son with Manika.
“It is sheer madness to expect the bad to do no wrong; for that is to wish for the impossible” — Lucius Seneca –a Roman Stoic philosopher.
Human history provides us with thousands of stories of what happens when people of low morality reach the top of power because they can corrupt the entire society. This is what we are observing in Pakistan where politicians like Imran Khan, who instead of feeling ashamed for their phone-sex audio leaks, blame whistleblowers for leaking the audio. In this audio, Khan’s weird and perverted sexual desires can be heard including having unnatural sex with the lady on the phone. However, this audio was thrown under the carpet because the woman on the other side of the phone was allegedly from a powerful family whose grandfather was an integral part of the rule of Gen Ayub Khan, and her sister was introduced to politics by Gen Musharraf and then she became a member of parliament and the member of the cabinet of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz. “Power grids in Pakistan are central and most of the time the state sacrifices the interest of the country in protecting these power grids; the case was the same in hushing up Khan’s sex audio.
I do not believe in moral policing but the overt or covert life of public figures such as politicians do come under moral policing because they are leaders and millions of people follow them and they influence their followers morally, therefore the pedestal of morality set for public figures are higher than a common man by Republic (De Republica that was documented by Plato and published in 375 BC) and the concept of Aristotle’s “the great-souled man” who should run the state. Aristotle’s “the great-souled man” who must be good. Considering all the virtues in turn, we shall feel it quite ridiculous to picture the great-souled man as other than a good man. Moreover, if he were bad, he would not be worthy of honor, since honor is the prize. There is no need to explain here the connotation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ because both have been explained in detail for centuries. Therefore, strict moral values are a prerequisite for politicians all over the world and thousands of politicians in the last 100 years had to sacrifice their political careers if they are caught in a sexual scandal. Imran Khan is the rear of the rear having a long history of low character, he was not only picked to rule Pakistan; a conservative society; but his past was portrayed as ‘his errors that he repented and left’. His past was whitewashed with the help of religious scholars who used the school of “Maifi” (forgiveness) stating that his sins were cleaned after his repentance. Since he could not change his low personality he faced a situation when the former husband of Bushra Bibi claimed that Khan’s marriage violated Islamic law as his divorced wife did not observe the necessary three-month break required under Islamic law before remarrying Khan. He also claimed that Khan had an extramarital relationship with his ex-wife when she was his (Manika’s) wife. Maneka claimed he divorced his wife in November 2017. Khan announced his third marriage with Bibi in February 2018. This case has again challenged the moral values of Imran Khan but his luck (or the blessing of unseen forces) still helps him and places him beyond the morality a politician must have.
A look into the fate of Western politicians who lost their political careers due to their alleged low moral values includes several scandals such as the Profumo affair (British politics during the early 1960s), Griveaux scandal (France), Chris Pincher scandal, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi scandal (bunga bunga sex parties), Hungarian MEP József Szájer scandal, Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal (French politics), Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias Scandal (USA) and Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho scandal (USA) and Sen. John Edwards scandal (USA) are immediate examples in which politicians have been guilty of double standards because they were found lower than morality being expected from politicians.
Should Imran Khan not testify on the same standards that are set for statesmen and politicians? this question needs an answer from all who try to justify the moral wrongdoings Imran had done in the past and still behaving he is beyond the moral and legal laws of the land.
