George Fulton is an interesting character. He’s big. He’s Caucasian. He’s Pakistani.
Here’s a picture:
George Fulton started out as a British national who came to Pakistan as a BBC World producer, looking to produce current affairs programming tailored for a Pakistani audience. Pakistan happens to be one of the few countries where people still watch BBC World.
Here’s a picture:
Whilst in Pakistan, he got involved in a local reality TV show called “George ka Pakistan” (George’s Pakistan), as the lead character. The challenge for him was to travel around Pakistan, and become a Pakistani within 3 months, or 12 episodes. At the end of the show, viewers would judge through SMS voting, whether or not George had done enough to deserve to become a Pakistani.
He travelled all over the country – milked cows in the villages and raced donkey carts in the cities – but more so than just being captured on camera being part of some superficial shenanigans, he seemed to bring a very interesting sort of intellectual depth to the show, and really tried to understand the political, social and cultural fabric of the country, for all its breadth, richness and complexity – and as he often pointed out, its contradictions. He hung out with the elite business class in Karachi, drove around with politicians (feudal lords) in some of the villages; in addition to all the antics and cultural rituals that he took part in with a diverse set of common folk across the length and breadth of the country.
He has a great, very likeable personality, and was very comfortable on screen. Needless to say, he was extremely popular, and the audience voted overwhelmingly in favor of him becoming a Pakistani. Around the same time, he met a Pakistani girl from a typical educated upper middle class background called Kiran, and married her. I presume he also converted to Islam (even though I am not one to judge, I presume this was done in order to make the marriage acceptable to the bride’s side of the family – cross cultural marriages and the religious conversions around them are such messy business, but often essential for making things happen). I am not exactly sure how he obtained his Pakistani citizenship, but my guess is that the marriage paved the way for it. He now holds a Pakistani passport.
He stayed back in Pakistan with Kiran for several years, living in Karachi. Initially, he started a current affairs talk show on a local channel, but it was not particularly successful. Later, he paired up with Kiran and started a breakfast talk show, which was more successful, called “Kiran aur George” (Kiran and George) – the audience loved watching a white guy talk about anything and everything related to everyday life in Pakistan, especially his attempts at speaking Urdu – the on screen chemistry between this rather peculiar couple was really good, including his cheeky antics followed by Kiran’s playful slaps on his shoulder. That show ran for quite a bit, but has now stopped airing.
They have left Pakistan now, and settled back in the UK. He has still been writing regularly for the Pakistani press. In fact he has been writing for a while now, but I have only recently discovered some of his work. He writes extremely well.
His April 2010 piece on Dubai is a timeless classic.
It echoes the sentiments shared by many but which I largely disagree with. It is still a very well written piece and an important thought provoking read.
His article in yesterday’s paper on Imran Khan was also interesting.
Imran Khan is Pakistan’s former cricket captain turned politician, a national hero for winning the 1992 cricket World Cup against some serious odds, and later for building a cancer hospital in Lahore by mobilizing donations from the public. His political career and personal life have been less stellar though – he married Jemima Goldsmith, a British socialite, but she struggled to settle into life in Pakistan, so he had to separate from her and their two kids – his politics are controversial, and he hasn’t been able to gain much traction as a politician; he has strong right wing tendencies, a soft spot for the religious extremists, but more so than anything, very little popular appeal and a tendency to seriously flip flop on some important issues.
This time, I agree with most of what George Fulton has set out in his article. Imran Khan is an interesting character, and for all his faults, he is still the best option we have for 2013 (barring Musharraf and the Army, who for matters of principle will not be allowed to make a comeback, at least not yet – even though their political capital has slowly been replenishing, especially after 3 years of Zardari – sub pe bhari i.e. a burden on everyone – and a general sense of disillusionment with all the other available options).
Here’s an illustration of the political options we have for 2013, based on my classic and trademarked “3-cardinal-sins in public service” framework. Each sin is scored from 0% to 100%, with 100% being the worst place for a candidate to be in from our perspective (at my discretion scores can exceed 100% as well, but this is only when I am really trying to hammer through a point). The candidate with the lowest net score or the lowest number of “net evil points” wins:
The 3-cardinal-sins in public service | Sharifs | Zardari | Chaudhrys of Gujrat | Imran Khan | Musharraf (without Chaudhrys?) | Army |
Apathy | 50% | 105% | 60% | 0% | 0% | 30% |
Lack of integrity | 80% | 110% | 80% | 0% | 0% | 30% |
Lack of competence | 60% | 80% | 70% | 80% | 50% | 50% |
Net evil points | 190% | 295% | 210% | 80% | 50% | 110% |
So with the two right most columns not an option, Imran Khan is perhaps our best option. He even comes quite close to Musharraf, who in my view shares Imran Khan’s genuine passion for the country, and strong integrity, but is quite a bit more skillful and competent.
But as George Fulton points out in his article, there are a few things Imran Khan needs to change.
First of all, politics is a game of maneuverability in a structurally constrained space, which often means compromise. As principled as he is, which ordinarily would be a great thing, he also seems to be unelectable – and clearly unacceptable to many of the key power players who wield influence over Pakistan. He has to show greater flexibility on some issues, and hold back on his rhetoric on others – at least for the sake of the greater good.
Secondly, he does hold a very serious “Messiah complex”. So far he has failed to build a movement around himself – he needs to change tack and focus on building it around the institution that he represents and around its ideas or key messages. We certainly require a bit of his personality to seed it, and to provide it with a foundation, but his persona alone, is not going to be enough.
On this, he is almost delusional – I heard him speak at the LSE a few years ago, back when I was a student there, where he drew parallels between himself and the Prophet Mohammad, and how the early years of the Prophet were also a struggle. The pronoun he uses needs to change. Less “I”, more “we”. He hasn’t received an official mandate from God (and cannot, given that Mohammad is the last prophet in Islam), so he needs to do something drastically different to turn his fortunes around.
There are many things he can get going for him – his biggest asset being a strong “latent” support base among young and educated urban voters, which is a very large and fast growing segment, thanks to our country’s demographics. They are largely disillusioned and disenfranchised by the country’s politics, and given that they feel so helpless about their country’s future, the only thing they care about is trying to find a way to immigrate to any other country.
He needs to find a way to mobilize them. His crazy talk show appearances, where he spews out strong inconsistent rhetoric against anyone and everyone, coupled with his delusional self-belief, are not going to get him their support – or anyone’s support for that matter. Something needs to change.
Can he start focusing on developing a base of consistent and focused key messages which will appeal to this core base, and also build a really kick-ass grass roots campaign machine focused around them? Surely he can mobilize all these students based on just their selfless (or collectively selfish) motivation to fix the country and defeat any political party, with their messy system of “karkuns” (political workers), built around a selfish and self-destructive system of patronage and rent distribution.
Yes we Khan! Yes we Khan! Yes we Khan!
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