Mountains and molehills
Rashed Rahman
The brouhaha over incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan’s medical check up and treatment in a private hospital (Shifa Hospital), as ordered by the Supreme Court on August 18, 2026, seems an unnecessary going a mile too far by what appears to be an insecure ‘hybrid’ (i.e. establishment dominated) government. Even if one concedes some weight to the government’s argument that the Supreme Court order may open the floodgates to requests for similar treatment by all other prisoners needing medical attention, it could have been handled better without going against the Supreme Court’s order in letter and spirit. If the government’s choice of sending Imran Khan to a government hospital (PIMS) yielded the result that it did, i.e. he was in good health and therefore returned to jail (notwithstanding the error of not conducting a recommended {on August 1} computed tomography angiography {CTA}), it would not be too farfetched to conclude that the private hospital check up in Shifa Hospital may well have yielded the same result, without leaving the government to face a possible contempt of court violation.
As things stand now, and taking Imran Khan’s sister Uzma Khan’s post-examination remark that her brother was fine, the government can be considered to have unnecessarily embarrassed no one but itself. Such self-inflicted, unnecessary wounds do the government’s case no good.
With due respect, the Supreme Court’s order of August 18 too presented a sense of urgency that the subsequent check up nullified. Admitted, the months long solitary confinement of Imran Khan must have taken a toll in terms of high blood pressure, mental anguish exacerbated by the problem in his right eye, etc., but the court seemed anxious to reverse its previous slowness in taking up the repeated petitions by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) to have Imran Khan’s medical condition checked and his isolation broken by family visits and phone calls with his sons. The instruction to shift Imran Khan to Shifa Hospital, as the PTI’s repeated petitions wanted, too seemed not to have taken into account the implications regarding other prisoners, who could claim similar concessions. At the time of writing, reports speak of three prisoners having forwarded petitions to the court on these lines. They may not be the last ones.
Pakistan has a poor record of treatment of high profile prisoners of political standing. One only has to recall Nawaz Sharif’s treatment by (ironically) Imran Khan’s government to clinch the argument. He was not allowed to visit his ailing wife, who passed away unseen by him. It was only when medical check ups revealed serious complications with his blood platelets count that the powers-that-be relented and allowed him to leave for London and treatment. One would have expected the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) to have shown far more sensitivity on the issue of the health problems of incarcerated leaders after undergoing that experience. There is also some seeming confusion within the government’s ranks regarding the whole issue, to the extent that now Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has ordered an inquiry into the whole affair.
What the government succeeded in doing through its ham-handed dealing with the issue of Imran Khan’s medical check up and breaking of his isolation was to turn a molehill into a mountain of bad air and negative vibes. It would have been far netter for the incumbents to have obeyed the Supreme Court’s injunction while filing its review petition to prevent an avalanche of similar requests from thousands of prisoners claiming equal treatment. At least then it would not have come out looking ‘cruel’, ‘uncaring’ and, pardon the slip, ‘stupid’.
rashed-rahman.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment