The Youthia Brigade: Pakistan’s New Curse

“Youthia” is a fascinating term. The Youthia Brigade believes that only uneducated people vote for PML-N. And that if they were educated or learned they would never support Nawaz Sharif.

Understanding Pakistani politics has nothing to do with education. Most PTI supporters are politically naïve. And that’s one of the major reasons why they support their ‘savior’.

youthia meaningIn fact, an uneducated barber or shopkeeper can have a truer assessment of Pakistani Politics than the educated social media warriors of Imran Khan.

The most idiotic belief of a PTI fanatic is: The ones criticizing PTI or Imran Khan are automatically considered “Patwaris” albeit, in reality, they are neutral people expressing their own opinion.

In the world of Youthias, either you support Imran Khan or be prepared to be declared a “Patwari”. And if you’re a journalist, you must be taking “lifafas” because any criticism against PTI is intolerable.

If a reputed foreign news publisher like The Economist or NewYorkTimes publishes a critical piece on Imran Khan, it is deemed as a conspiracy against the great leader.

In the case of the local media house, let’s say Dawn or Express Tribune, any negative article on Khan and PTI is considered a conspiracy or fake news.  But if the same news outlet publishes a positive article, it is deemed as a fair assessment.

Double standards? Pretty much.

Imran Khan’s ‘Corruption Elimination Mantra’ is the typical hypocritical behavior of PTI. People around Kaptaan are corrupt while he wages an anti-corruption war against his political opponents.

Basically for Khan and his supporters, anyone who joins PTI no matter what his background will be dry-cleaned from his past sins.

So, you tell me does the Tehreek-i-Insaf stand for anti-corruption, or is it just a fraud? Imran Khan has built an erroneous perception of himself that he is a simple man.

Actually, he is very cunning when you look at how he has fooled the educated masses and still continues to do so.

You’d have heard him say this countless times in his jalsas and speeches: “Allah has given me everything – fame, respect, and money.

What else would a person want in his life? It would have been very easy for me to live a comfortable and relaxed life in a foreign land. I didn’t come into politics to accumulate wealth, unlike Sharifs. I have come to change Pakistan”.

Undoubtedly the message is appealing.

But while it’s true that he didn’t venture into politics to make money; the reality is: he had a burning desire to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan.

To achieve this aim he tried to be a principled politician addressing real issues like interference of establishment in civilian matters.

Though long years of disappointing results made him realize the hard truth, i.e. he’ll need to compromise on his principles to reach his goal.

Ergo, Imran Khan became a typical politician.

Imran Khan Has Made You A Fool

The fact is: PTI is just like any other mainstream political party – be it PPP or PML-N. PTI is filled with “Lotas”; many of their party members were part of PPP and before that part of the Musharraf government.

So when you ask a typical PTI supporter that how would they bring change when all the tried and tested people have been part of the system before. They would say: “The difference is Imran Khan. He is not corrupt”.

And that’s their only answer. When one talks about their poor performance, they either run away from the argument or say this: “So what is the alternative? Nawaz Sharif? Zardari?”

I say the alternative and the only solution is “independent institutions”. We have the Military controlling and running the country with absolutely no check on their power and the self-serving politicians willing to be their puppets. So, if this is the state of affairs, there will be no change whatsoever, even if Mr. Clean (Imran Khan) completes his tenure.prime minister imran khan

The issue is Imran Khan’s fight was never about getting rid of corruption. It was actually about doing whatever it takes to become the Prime Minister. That is what his goal was and he has achieved it.

Fighting corruption was just a smokescreen to attract people to support him.

And, corruption is not the disease itself, it is a symptom of a disease. If you go after the symptom, it won’t help cut the roots or foundation of the disease. Still, after 2 years in power and after 7 years in power in KPK, there hasn’t been any ‘real and sincere effort to root out corruption’.

But what can you say when the highly educated followers of Imran Khan fell for the “$200 billion of looted wealth crap”.

There is one more wrong perception built by the Youthia Brigade: “Imran Khan has made the public particularly the youth politically aware”.

In reality, the lack of political awareness of the majority population has worked for him and is still working despite all the incompetence.

Lastly, one glaring hypocrisy of Youthias is the indifferent standards they set when judging their leader with Nawaz/Zardari. Imran Khan as the opposition leader was ruthless on Nawaz for taking loans from IMF.

But when he as the Prime Minister of Pakistan spoke about going to the IMF for a loan,  the level of hypocrisy reached peak levels from PTI fanboys.

“It is the first time in our history that a Prime Minister is explaining to the nation of the reasons why we need an IMF program”,  said a Youthia.

Don’t forget the mocking of Metro bus projects by Imran Khan and his supporters. The “Jangla Bus” as he used to say, turned out to be a big success compared to the mess called BRT Peshawar.

Read more: Imran Khan and his hero – Tipu Sultan

The project has been delayed several times and is also plagued by corruption.

Conclusion

The Youthia phenomenon is not going anywhere. It is here to stay even if Imran Khan continues to make fun of himself by his ill-thought-out speeches and the conspicuous lack of vision.

For Youthias, it doesn’t matter whether Imran Khan delivers because in their view he has already achieved so much – Cricket champion, playboy, philanthropist, and now Prime Minister.

Loyalty must always be with the people. But not in the case of ‘Youthias’. Their loyalty will always be with Imran Khan as they think even if he fails, it will be Pakistan’s loss.