Iit is always election season in Pakistan. The country has held by-elections every two months since 131 MPs from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) resigned en masse in April, when its leader, Imran Khan, was ousted as prime minister in a vote of no confidence. Yet the final ballot on October 16, with eight parliamentary seats up for grabs, was unlike any other: seven featured the same PTI candidate, Mr. Khan himself, who presented it as a referendum on his popularity. He won six.
Mr. Khan has made his point. When he was kicked out by a coalition of opposition parties with the blessing of the military, which runs things behind the scenes, it looked like Mr Khan’s political career was over. But instead of going quietly, he took to the streets and held rallies in which he alleged, without evidence, that America and the opposition had conspired to overthrow him because he refused to give in to their foreign policy demands. His supporters find this argument perfectly reasonable and show up in large numbers at his events. Mr Khan has spent the past few months demanding a snap election (the next is due by November 2023). He now threatens to march with his supporters on Islamabad, the capital, to force the government to organize one.
This is a recipe for more political instability in a country already in crisis. The big worry is that his threatened march will force a confrontation on the streets of the capital. Yet this will not easily translate to his election. It is the prerogative of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to dissolve the House. He is adamant that parliament will complete its term, hoping this will allow his ruling alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement, to stabilize the economy with the help of a IMF program which Mr Khan sabotaged when he left office by announcing extravagant fuel subsidies.
The task is difficult. Mr. Sharif has just replaced his five-month-old finance minister in an attempt to tackle soaring inflation, which remains at more than 20% year-on-year. The cost of damage from the devastating summer floods was estimated at $32 billion to $40 billion. The World Bank estimates that the poverty rate could increase by up to 4 percentage points, or 9 million more people, in the coming months. The government is seeking to reschedule $27 billion in debt, much of it owed to China, which tends not to like restructuring loans. The risk of sovereign default has receded in recent months, but it has not completely disappeared. Meanwhile, high global natural gas prices threaten an energy shortage as winter approaches.
To carry on amid these challenges and Mr. Khan’s continued interference, the government is pursuing a plethora of strategies. He wielded the law against Mr Khan, forcing him to defend himself in various cases that could disqualify him from electoral politics. Another trick up Mr Sharif’s sleeve is the appointment of a new army chief at the end of November – a huge post of power in a country where armed forces make or break governments. Indeed, Mr Khan lost his post as prime minister in part because he fell out with the incumbent president, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
Secret recordings of conversations in the prime minister’s office, many dating back to Mr Khan’s tenure, have surfaced online. The leaks appear to be aimed at discrediting Mr Khan and debunking his claim that there was an American-led plot to overthrow him. The government has ordered an investigation but is visibly insensitive to the breach, which also revealed conversations implicating Mr Sharif. Mr Khan, for his part, claims the government will release fake “dirty videos” in an attempt to harm him.
Mr Khan has pledged to give Mr Sharif just a few more days to call an election. The Minister of the Interior has warned that the government “will hang [Mr Khan] upside down if he undertakes his long march to Islamabad”. President Joe Biden recently declared that Pakistan is “perhaps one of the most dangerous nations in the world” because it has “nuclear weapons without any cohesion”. Pakistan’s belligerent politicians seem to be doing their best to prove him right.■