Difficult innings of a Prime Minister of Pakistan

Imran Khan promised to end Pakistan’s attempt with ‘corrupt’ and ‘dynastic’ politicians. He insisted that his government would restore Pakistan’s sovereignty, break the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) begging bowl forever, and never again accept the role of a front-line state in ‘America’s wars’ Will do He prided himself as a born-again Muslim, who would free Pakistani society from the clutches of a decadent Western pop culture.

is in charge of the army

In the end, it was the proverbial elephant in the room he dared not to name—Pakistan’s pre-eminent politico-economic power, the military—that ended his prime minister’s crusade. Mr Khan may have been formally ousted via a no-confidence motion in Pakistan’s lower house of parliament in early April, but it is an open secret that his downfall came after the dishonesty of top army officials, who were less That, compared to four years earlier, had facilitated his ascent to the nation’s top elected office. It is said that the generals planned for Mr. Khan to be in power for two consecutive five-year terms; As it turned out, his patience ran out before the end of the first.

There is nothing novel about a Pakistani prime minister who screams and screams after he is defeated with the military. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, his daughter Benazir Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif, among others, have all faced a similar fate. Bhutto and Sharif had alternated in government for the best part of 30 years, with the exception of General Pervez Musharraf’s nine-year military rule, before Mr Khan’s ascension as prime minister in 2018. On each occasion, they agreed. to an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with the military, only for the military to engineer their later unofficial collapse.

Imran Khan should have separated. A Cricket World Cup-winning captain with no political ancestry, he represented the perfect foil to the state’s unelected systems, which, in the prestigious colonial tradition, denigrated politics by praising a ‘clean and efficient’ administrative system. were. When Musharraf’s dictatorship was burdened by its own contradictions in 2008, triggered by a lawyer-led street movement, Mr. Khan’s grooming by the military establishment began.

In 2013, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won government power for the first time in the war-torn Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. While the ballot box was formally won, establishment ‘electorates’ – constituency-level politicians, whose primary objective is to sit on Treasury benches – joined the fray, according to PTI. By the time the next general election was held in 2018, the PTI had enough elections to form a coalition, and with it the reins of the federal government.

demographic factors

Yet, the rise of PTI cannot be explained only by the tricks of the state’s non-elected machinery. Pakistan’s urban, educated class has always been captivated by strongmen who promise to clean up the Augean stables. The general and the judge were ideal, but Imran Khan fit the bill even better.

The messiah complex surrounding the personality of Imran Khan was greatly enabled by both demographic and technological change. Nearly two-thirds of Pakistan’s more than 220 million people are under the age of 29. This majority has come of age as digitization has transformed political communication. Able and willing to articulate their political preferences beyond the constraints of a socially strong patronage network, many young people believed in the promotion of Mr. Khan’s personality. These tech-savvy and often extremist supporters used social media platforms to promote PTI as a real alternative to the status quo, not dissimilar to other contemporary right-wing populists, such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump.

a decreasing

After Imran Khan became the Prime Minister, the army played together for the first three years. The combination of digitally mobilized PTI supporters and the state’s own propaganda machinery translated into increasingly sharp censorship of the media, progressive intellectuals and people’s movements as well as the two main opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League. Nawaz (PML-N). But voices of dissent refused to go away, while the PTI government gave concession after concession to big businesses – including those run by the military – and after retracting its rhetoric about foreign aid, completely in the hands of the IMF. accepted to rotate. The opposition was thus able to stir up public discontent, particularly in the key Punjab province, where former prime minister Nawaz Sharif teleconferenced speeches harshly from the comfortable confines of self-exile in London.

Yet, given the long lease he was given, Imran Khan still survived, and even thrived. But the cat was set among pigeons when, in October 2021, he refused to sign a summary issued by Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa to a new spy chief in Power Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). done. The story goes that the prime minister wanted Lt Gen Faiz Hameed to retain his position long enough to see PTI through another general election. Imran Khan protested for almost three weeks, eventually accepting the change. But it was too late; Challenging the autonomy of the army proved to be Mr. Khan’s death knell.

Shahbaz Sharif on top

The resulting domino effect eventually culminated in his expulsion and the swearing-in of Nawaz Sharif’s younger brother and three-time Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, as the new prime minister. Having historically enjoyed more cordial relations with the establishment than his brother Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz Sharif will be charged with stabilizing the ship and getting the country involved in the next general election, which is to be held by the summer of 2024 at the latest. Should be.

But what can be done to permanently stabilize a ship on choppy water? in which a bloated national security apparatus acts as an arbiter of politics; Where the continued upward redistribution of wealth reflects all major political players and an exponential debt burden, and where anti-establishment political sentiment is largely captured by reactionary forces, least of all not by religious extremists?

Indeed, even before he was deposed, Imran Khan himself had taken a leaf out of the religious right’s copybook by saying that the opposition parties were conspiring with the United States to oust him. Subsequent palace intrigues did not save him, but his story of a Washington-backed regime change persisted. Interestingly, while Mr. Khan himself has shied away from direct criticism of the army, his supporters have spoken out against the decision of top officials to withdraw support to PTI and instead patronize ‘corrupt’ and ‘dynastic’ politicians. It is not said that the incident of Imran Khan should be erased in the dustbin of history forever.

thread in the neighborhood

Not long ago, Pakistan used to be the black sheep of South Asia. A country ruled by generals for half of its existence, religion to deadly influence in the nooks and crannies of society, and a military economy constantly on the verge of collapse. Today, as the military establishment is falling apart with another civilian government, Pakistan’s plight is similar to that of its neighbours. In Sri Lanka, a former army officer has razed the country along with his strong brethren, while governance in India is more dependent on the violent fringes of some minorities, even as a large part of its accumulation governs has also been included. Mainly youth population.

Populists thrive on the politics of hate. Imran Khan probably lives in the hope that he can once again win the side of the army. Only when a truly progressive politics takes root within Pakistan – and, indeed, South Asia’s – young majority, can we expect a meaningful twist in this sordid tale.

Asim Sajjad Akhtar is Associate Professor of Political Economy at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, and has been associated with progressive political movements in Pakistan for more than two decades.