And he continued with this generosity afterwards. And this last is a quality that appeals greatly to the middle class, which formed the core constituency of the PTI. He wasn’t the only PTI leader to follow this path; Asad Umar had a similar trajectory. Even after he became prime minister, interactive sessions with him lacked the kind of decorum usually prevalent while talking to heads of states.With Khan, there was, and continues to be, a greater level of comfort and a sense of equality. Imran Khan is a leader who is said to be — at some levels — the creation of the media. (In the interest of transparency, I should confess that I too have been one of the anchors/vultures who lined up outside his door after he was released. Abbasi was one of the few, or the only prime minister, who continued to give one-on-one interviews liberally, to those who are deemed friendly to his party as well as the PML-N’s ferocious critics. Last week, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was released from jail after the Islamabad High Court allowed him bail. While meeting the latter two, much thought goes into the phrasing of the question and how it is asked, she pointed out, while with Khan one doesn’t have to worry about being deferential. How will this play out in the future and will family-dominated parties change to accommodate such figures? All this remains to be seen. Perhaps this is because it is a widely prevalent view that overexposure on television is to be avoided for celebrities — be they of the entertainment kind or from the political world — but is this really true in the present age of television-led politics of Pakistan?Consider the present Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Former prime ministers from the PPP such as Yousuf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervaiz wholesale hollow wall anchors Ashraf are rarely found in front of the cameras except at press conferences.But it seems that for the moment the game has changed. As few could match Khan earlier when both the PML-N and the PPP were accused of being a friendly opposition, leaving the PTI head to fill the vacuum. Umar, too, is a face of the PTI in a way that few others in the PTI are. Since his release, he has been giving television interviews at a pace matched by few others.This enabled him to present a different face — not just because he was accessible but because he seemed less distant, and not someone who had to be treated with deference and distance. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan (Photo: AP) The angry politician is back on television. A television channel anchor once remarked perceptively that there was a comfort level during interactions with Khan, which was not present during meetings with the Sharifs or Asif Zardari.And this is proving true for Abbasi as well. In this age of television, he is the first from a family-dominated party to achieve this sense of celebrityhood. In the past couple of years, he has grown in stature, so much so that in the PML-N’s reorganisation, a new post was created for him and there were few who questioned why. Earlier, the PPP had two prime minister who were not from the party’s first family and they seemed to have made little impact.The anger is apparently part of the recipe for success, as is the ability to appear down to earth and ‘one of us’, rather than different.Most of his contemporaries — from any party — are not this generous with the television cameras.