Imran Khan’s tumultuous term as Pakistan’s prime minister ended after weeks of intense political drama and days of constitutional chaos.
A landmark verdict by the Supreme Court late Thursday restored the parliament Khan tried to dissolve and imposed a no-confidence vote, which he tried to avoid.
In practice, Khan was left with a choice: to resign or be removed from office.
Imran Khan supporters chant slogans as they protest in Islamabad after he loses a no-confidence vote in parliament [Akhtar Soomro/Reuters]
The political demise of the former prime minister is rooted in double new realities. In parliament, Khan’s Pakistani Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) lost the support of coalition allies by denying him the majority he needed to win a no-confidence vote.
Outside parliament, Khan appears to have lost the support of Pakistan’s powerful army, which the opposition claims helped him win the 2018 general election and recently publicly quarreled with the prime minister over appointments to top military and political decisions.
The PTI and the military have denied the allegations.
In recent weeks, as the main opposition parties, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), have stepped up efforts to oust Khan, coalition allies have come out loud in displeasure.
“As far as governance is concerned, the government has failed miserably,” said Senator Anwaar ul Hak Kakar of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), a coalition ally that withdrew support for Khan in late March.
“There has been discontent over the last two years,” Cacker added. “The party [BAP] he was dissatisfied with his share of the federal government and the ministerial portfolio allocated to him.
The sour mood among Khan’s former allies was backed by Nadim Afzal Chan, a special aide to the prime minister who resigned and rejoined the opposition PNP in early March.
“I was impressed by Khan’s anti-corruption platform and tired of the status quo,” Chan said. “But then I saw that while Khan spoke publicly about the poor, he surrounded himself with rich investors.
Economic difficulties
The deepening economic crisis has contributed to Khan’s dissatisfaction with double-digit inflation, which has affected much of his tenure.
In February, as opposition opposition to Khan grew, the prime minister announced cuts in domestic fuel and electricity prices despite the global rise, promising to freeze prices until the end of the fiscal year in June.
The move has heightened further pressure on Pakistan’s chronic fiscal deficit and balance of payments problems. The rupee fell to historically low levels against the US dollar this week, and the State Bank of Pakistan sharply raised interest rates in an extraordinary session.
“Part of that was the situation they inherited from the previous government, and part of it was, of course, COVID,” said Shahrukh Vani, an economist at Blavatnik School of Management at Oxford University. “But the government quickly started fighting fires and reforms were never undertaken.
For Khan’s former allies, such as Chan, discontent among constituency voters has surpassed. “Inflation, a shortage of fertilizers, the local government in Punjab, the police, it was all too much,” Chan said.
In parliament, the loss of Allied support turned Khan’s numbers upside down. The BAP, the Mutahida Kaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistani Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) hold less than five percent of the seats in the 342-member National Assembly.
But by promising to support a no-confidence vote against Khan, coalition allies effectively ended Khan’s three-and-a-half-year term as prime minister. Opposition parties also claimed support from a number of dissident PTI lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the economy remains in dire straits. Miftah Ismail, a former PML-N finance minister aimed at resuming his post in 2018, said: “The two biggest economic challenges facing Pakistan at the moment are high inflation and the rapid depletion of foreign exchange reserves.
“The difficulty is that as the currency devalues due to declining reserves, this leads to even higher inflation.
The role of the military
With the confirmation of Khan’s departure, the former allies are increasingly outspoken about the third rail of Pakistani politics: civil-military relations.
The prime minister’s parliamentary support began to fall apart when the military signaled that it would not side with Khan against the opposition, a policy of so-called neutrality.
“When the institution became neutral, the Allies saw that the government would not survive,” said Senator Cacker of the BAP. “Once it became clear that he could not stay, it was only a matter of time.”
Khan is the latest in a long line of Pakistani prime ministers to quarrel with the military over key appointments and foreign policy.
In October, raging civil-military tensions erupted in public when Khan tried to detain Lieutenant General Faiz Hamid as a military intelligence officer, rejecting the nomination for army chief, General Kamar Bajwa.
General Bajwa’s nominee, Lieutenant General Nadezhda Anjum, was eventually appointed the new director general of inter-agency intelligence, but the ongoing week-long confrontation was bruised and ominous.
General Bajwa’s second term as army chief will end in November, with General Hamid being one of the highest-ranking generals to replace him. The Pakistani prime minister appoints the army chief.
Khan’s attempt to reconsider ties with the United States, Pakistan’s largest trading partner and a capricious ally that the military seeks to maintain as an important partner, was also remarkable.
In February, in pursuit of what Khan described as neutral foreign policy, Khan traveled to Russia in search of trade deals on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He left with only a handshake from Russian President Vladimir Putin hours after the attack began on February 24.
As the Pakistani military backed Khan’s trip to Moscow, differences widened as Khan made an internal high-stakes turn. Faced with a no-confidence vote in parliament, Khan said the United States was plotting to remove him as punishment for his trip to Russia and neutral foreign policy.
As proof of the plot, Khan waved a letter during a public rally in Islamabad on March 27, alleging that the United States had issued a diplomatic warning to Pakistan to remove him from the post of prime minister.
The diplomatic message, the alleged US threat and Khan’s claim that the no-confidence motion was part of a US-led conspiracy shook Pakistani politics and civil-military relations.
Retired Major General Atar Abbas, a former military spokesman and Pakistan’s ambassador to Ukraine from 2015 to 2018, said: “The letters required a strong response and corrective action. The answer [in the military] is confused about whether it should have been used to intervene with a vote of no confidence. “
General Abbas also described a number of differences between Khan and the military leadership that have accumulated during Khan’s rule, including Khan’s poor political and economic governance, which acts as a disruption to the military’s public image.
Regarding Khan’s opposition to military operations in Pakistan and US-led international wars since the 9/11 attacks, General Abbas said: “The prime minister’s position on the war on terror is that we fought the American war and lost people and supplies . The military’s view was that this was the result of the Afghan war, and we had no choice.
“The pressure on the military leadership is that if this is an American war, then all the casualties of young officers and soldiers are a loss,” Abbas said.
Another retired military official, Vice-Marshal of Aviation Shahzad Chaudhri, suggested that tensions with the military also affected Khan’s style of governing.
“In politics, Khan may be unstoppable. There was no predictability or stability. Imran Khan is a populist, that’s his vulnerability. “
Defeated in parliament and abolished from outside, however, Khan is unlikely to be expended politically. The cyclical nature of Pakistani politics has seen former prime ministers recover before.
Khan also has the advantage of making his way back to power from a fertile political base.
Chan, the former special aide to the prime minister, said: “A month ago, people were abusing [Khan and the PTI government] for inflation.
“Now they say he has stood up for a proud and independent Pakistan.
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