Islamabad, Pakistan: Some people are born abusive and judgmental and former prime minister Imran Khan can be put on the list of such personalities.
Slurring opponents, calling them names, and taunting them through “superiority humor” is an integral part of Imran Khan’s politics who has been using words like Patwaris (coined for everyone who is a sympathizer or worker of PMLN), Maulana Diesel (for Maulana Fazlur Rehman), Nani Ama (for Maryum Nawaz) Dirty Harry (for top official of Pakistan Army), Choor (for all politicians except those who joined PTI) and boot polisher (for former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif). Now his latest target is Chief Justice Islamabad High Court Justice Aamer Farooq.
PTI’s trolling team is giving different new abusive names to Justice Aamer Farooq who has refused to provide blanket bails to Imran Khan whom he had been enjoying from the Supreme Court and even from Islamabad High Court in the past. The target in the recent past was the Additional Session Judge of Islamabad Humayun Dilawar who passed judgment in the Toshakhana case. This judge was under abusive attacks from PTI followers even in London where he had gone for a judicial international course. It is pertinent to mention that Judge Humayun Dilawar sentenced Imran Khan on August 5, 2023, to three years in jail and a fine of Rs100,000 in the Toshakhana criminal case filed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Since then his life has been under threat and he wrote a letter to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on August 17, 2023, expressing concerns about his safety and explaining the higher level of harassment from the PTI supporters subsequent to delivering the verdict in the Toshakhana case. He also mentioned events he had gone through during his stay in the UK where the PTI activists protested against him. He cited a social media campaign that emerged both during and after the trial, which resulted in substantial threats originating from various individuals worldwide. He also highlighted the threats extended to his family in his hometown and disrupted his children’s schooling due to security concerns. Now new victim of Imran Khan is Justice Aamer Farooq.
Strangely, the Supreme Court has never guarded the lower judiciary against the terror it has been facing from the PTI slur brigade. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has never taken any action to stop Imran Khan from harassing his junior colleagues for the reasons best known to the CJ himself.
Khan has submitted a petition to the Supreme Court Pakistan for transferring all of his cases being adjudicated in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) to either Lahore High Court or Peshawar High Court, accusing Justice Aamer Farooq of “deep and settled bias”.
In his petition, Imran Khan called his conviction a “cooked up and fabricated charge” and blamed the IHC chief justice for this “injustice”. During the PDM government, Imran Khan enjoyed space for abusing and accusing everybody whosoever came his way, things are otherwise now and massive changes held recently in the federal bureaucracy have dismantled the system that had mostly been indifferent over accusations leveled by Khan and the Federal Ministry of Law and Justice on Sunday that is off day has strongly responded attacks against Justice Aamer Farooq in social media attack and said that the social media attack by a Political Party (PTI) on Chief Justice Islamabad High Court is utterly reprehensible,” The statement further said that political parties should refrain from attacking the Institutions of the country.
It may be remembered that PTI as a cult and Imran Khan as an abusive personality went too far that they did not even spare martyrs of the nation who had sacrificed their lives for their motherland. The attacks against monuments of martyrs on May 9, 2023, were part of a sequel started by targeting martyrs of an unlucky helicopter crash in Balochistan. The unfortunate and insensitive media campaign against the Pakistan Army launched after the unlucky helicopter crash in Baluchistan indicated that social media had polluted social norms and damaged the social fabric of Pakistan. The campaign was the ultimate result of circumstances in which the slur brigade of PTI had been allowed to taunt, name-calling, and slur state institutions without any check. Such an insensitive act is not a new phenomenon and history testifies that self-obsessed, narcissists, anarchists, and populist leaders in the past ruined their states and compromised the lives of their citizens but never let their egos down. Disobeying conventional norms of public speaking usually provides space for “avatar-like” narcissists who get public power through slurs, name-calling, throwing sarcastic puns, and following unapologetic conduct. The era of exceptionally good computer software now helps such populist leaders to manipulate human minds through deep and cheap fakes and the recent trolling campaign against the session judge is the latest example in which two different persons were tagged as Judge Humayun Dilawar in social media reels and their photos with former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif were tagged as “judge so and so with Mian Nawaz Sharif taking instructions for convicting Imran Khan” etc.
Since the rise of Imran Khan, a systematic influx of deep and cheap fake was being introduced and a new virus of fake videos and propaganda echo chambers were infused. I don’t know how many among us actually register their presence because of their covert nature but I studied them deeply during the last three years. Artificial intelligence (AI), the filter bubbles, trends, hashtags, and echo chambers mercilessly slaying everyone coming their way.
The remains of the populist regime will not fade away easily and Imran Khan’s Communication Warfare Brigade will keep making people confused if not dismantled promptly and properly. By properly I mean systematic effort by those who know the semiotics of propaganda and its cognitive functioning on the human mind must be taken on board. We need experts in communication, propaganda, and IT to stop this torpedo which is showing clear intentions to attack the sovereignty of our state pillars and our state.
History confirms that once narcissists rise to the level of popular leaders, either they destroy the state nation or the state has to destroy them and there is no third option found by history.
