Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan is on a weak wicket as a determined Opposition is all set to remove his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government from power with a no-confidence motion in the National Assembly.
The date for the vote has not yet been announced but the Opposition had recommended to the Speaker that parliament should be convened any day before March 22. The Opposition requires the support of 172 members in a house of 342 to oust Khan.
This is not the first time that Pakistan’s Opposition parties have tried to remove Khan. However, this time, there is much more public anger against Khan who took office in 2018 with the promise of change and a new kind of politics. He has done neither.
There was always a question mark about his election victory as there have been accusations of massive rigging. But none of this touched Khan who had the backing of the all-powerful Pakistani army. Nawaz Sharif, who was forced to resign following allegations of corruption, was disliked by the military establishment. Speculation is that the army helped to replace Sharif with Imran Khan, who was their blue-eyed boy at that time.
Apart from going after every Opposition politician and using every state agency to harass them into submission, Imran Khan has been able to deliver very little. Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League was targeted and continuously harassed by state agencies. So has Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party as well as anyone opposed to PTI. The economy is in shambles and it has forced the government to approach the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package. This has led to untold hardships for the poor with a surge in prices of essential commodities. The poor state of the economy has led to anger in the streets against Khan.
But perhaps all of this would not have mattered for Imran Khan if the Pakistani army continued to back him. The army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has cooled towards the PTI leader. There were differences of opinion last year over the appointment of the new ISI chief. The former flamboyant spy chief Faiz Hameed, who had played a decisive role in ousting Sharif and getting Imran Khan elected, was replaced last November by Lieutenant General Nadeem Anjum. There were differences between the army and the Prime Minister’s Office over the appointment but those were smoothed out with Khan agreeing to the army’s choice of Anjum.
Unlike Faiz Hameed, the rock star spy chief, Anjum is low-key and refuses to have his photograph splashed across the media. The army announced a few days ago that it would steer clear of politics and remain neutral on the no-confidence move. This is a major blow to Imran Khan who had previously relied on the army’s help not just to win power but to keep the Opposition in check.
The army’s announcement of neutrality was not appreciated by Imram Khan. He thundered at a public meeting a day later.
“There is no such thing as neutrality. Only animals are neutral,” Khan told cheering supporters, according to reports in the Pakistani press.
Fighting with his back to the wall, Imran Khan has been lashing out at the Opposition, warning them that if he is out of power, he would be much more dangerous and would go after them with a heavier hand. Like every politician in the sub-continent, he now sees a conspiracy of foreign powers to destablise Pakistan.
Pakistan’s former envoy to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, writing in the respected Dawn newspaper lamented that foreign policy was now being used for domestic politics.
“The more this pressure has mounted and public discontent intensified over inflation, the greater the ruling party’s resort to disingenuous narratives about an international conspiracy. The PM himself was reported as saying that ‘multiple foreign hands’ were behind the Opposition’s campaign to oust him. A government spokesman repeatedly tweeted that the no-confidence move was being hatched by ‘international powers’ with the Opposition merely acting as hired ‘brokers’. Other ministers echoed this,’’ Lodhi wrote in a column on Monday.
