Like a spoilt child given a rap across the knuckles, Imran Khan is learning that his actions can have consequences. On Thursday, one of the targets of Imran’s ire, former Chief Justice (CJ) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, served him with a Rs 20 billion defamation notice, alleging Rs 15 billion in damages and five billion rupees for mental anguish, harassment and humiliation of the former CJ and his family. Copies of the notice were distributed to the press. It states that the respondent has 14 days to either submit an “unconditional apology” or “agree to pay the damages quantified”. This follows a string of accusations of involvement in rigging by the former cricketer against all and sundry, the controversial former CJ being top of the list: a far cry from the halcyon days of their relationship when Imran wrote the former CJ’s biography for Time magazine in 2012 and called him “the first head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court to attempt to bring the powerful to justice.” Apparently that was fine when the powerful included people Imran assumes are guilty of every crime he alleges, but is completely unjustified when directed against Imran himself. Legal experts say that if found guilty he could be disqualified from the National Assembly (NA) and so the notice should serve as a reminder to Imran that he is also part of the ‘venal political class’ and that he can and should be held accountable for his actions if he expects others to be held accountable for theirs. Imran’s bipolar attitudes towards state institutions and people associated with them do not stop at the former CJ. In July 2012 after former Supreme Court Justice Fakhruddin G Ebrahim was appointed Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) after a consensus on his nomination was reached between the main political parties, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) released a statement saying it welcomed the news and noted that “no political force should have objection on the name of Mr Fakhruddin G Ebrahim as he is a man of unquestionable integrity.” Apparently this only held true if the former CEC was doing the PTI’s bidding, because after an election that many observers thought would pan out exactly as it did, the PTI immediately accused the former CEC of playing a part in rigging. To his credit, former Justice Ebrahim resigned the post of CEC immediately after the elections ended instead of taking advantage of the many privileges and perks associated with top government spots, reinforcing his principled credentials. This underlines what is essentially an inconsistent and some would say two-faced narrative being promoted by Khan for what are quickly being exposed as egotistical and selfish motives. It appears that Imran Khan simply cannot credit the idea that he lost in a relatively fair election and that his party performed surprisingly well for a party without a significant presence on the political scene. Without an extensive party machine, decades of constituency and relationship building, and candidates in every constituency across the country, the PTI managed to accumulate a significant presence in the NA and formed the government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). However, instead of governing KP and bringing reform to the electoral system through the NA, Imran has chosen to let his ego guide his actions on the false assessment that he should have won the elections despite all the evidence that such a result was not possible in Pakistan’s electoral landscape. It is clear as well that Imran’s claim that rigging occurred in four constituencies was simply to present a casus belli to attack the entire democratic system and everyone involved in it. The opportunistic politics Imran is playing are in the worst tradition of Pakistani political gamesmanship and have left the entire country nervous, fearful and insecure at a time when it is facing extreme challenges and requires stability. By stretching the resources of the state and using fear, slander and aggressive rhetoric to set up a ‘final conflict’ with the PML-N, the PTI is doing this country a terrible disservice. As its planned ‘Independence March’ on August 14 looms, we can only hope that Imran Khan comes to his senses because the possibility of the march ending in tragedy is growing. *