Pakistan - #PeshawarAttack - The Promise

Perhaps the most consistent element of Imran Khan’s leadership style is his unflinching commitment to making promises he cannot keep. The incoherency of his political narratives and allegiances aside, Khan is adept at making sweeping statements so fundamentally ill thought out, that he is practically setting himself up to be the butt of jokes in editorials around the country. Consider the most recent gem: “From now on, you will never again see any kind of protocol with me.” This, said in response to the parents’ protest outside APS Peshawar on Wednesday, is a response to the wrong kind of issue. Nobody outside the school was protesting the 32 cars in Khan’s motorcade. Grieving families had gathered in protest to show their democratic representative that he had failed to deliver to their sensitivities and concerns at a time when their plight had shaken the world. That he was conspicuous by his repeated absence in which time he had chosen to marry, a decision entirely his to make but one that invited an overwhelming and predictable media response; that he had not expressed (with his usual political rabidity, at least) his unflinching and sincere support for fighting the people responsible for the massacre of their children; and that he seemed still to be primarily occupied by the rigging that had allegedly stolen his federal mandate to rule the country. These were, one imagines, the primary points of the parents’ protest outside the school. Instead, Imran chose to focus on the perceived hit to his honest-to-God, boy-next-door simplicity: the number of cars in his motorcade.
It is impossible and impractical for politicians to travel without at least some kind of security protocol. If Khan thinks he can do it, he obviously did not consult any members of his party before speaking... again. And finally, as long as he picks the wrong issues on which to defend his integrity, it will continue to reveal the myopia that seems to be the very basis of his character. He must hold his own on the bigger questions, he must prove himself to be a leader different than the others by actually leading— and not by the number of vehicles behind him.