A landmark Supreme Court ruling late Thursday restored a parliament that Kahn had sought to dissolve and ordered a no-confidence motion he sought to avoid. Khan was essentially left with a choice: to resign or be elected to office. The former prime minister’s political demise was rooted in two new realities. Inside parliament, Khan’s Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had lost the support of coalition allies, depriving him of the majority he needed to defeat the no-confidence vote. Outside parliament, Khan appeared to be losing support for Pakistan’s powerful military, which the opposition claimed helped him win the 2018 general election and recently clashed publicly with the prime minister over senior military and political decisions. The PTI and the military have denied the allegations. In recent weeks, as the main opposition parties, the People’s Party of Pakistan (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), stepped up their efforts to oust Khan, allied allies became vocal in their opposition. them with him. “In terms of governance, the government has completely failed,” said Senator Anwaar ul Haq Kakar of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), an ally who withdrew his support for Khan in late March. “There has been dissatisfaction for the last two years,” Kakar added. “The party [BAP] he was not happy about her share in the federal government and the ministerial portfolio given to him. “ The bitter mood among Khan’s old allies was echoed by Nadeem Afzal Chan, a special aide to the prime minister who resigned and rejoined the opposition PPP 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 was privately surrounded by rich investors.”
Financial distress
A deeper economic crisis contributed to the resentment with Khan, as double-digit inflation lasted much of his tenure. In February, as the momentum of opposition was built against Khan, the prime minister announced a reduction in domestic fuel and electricity prices despite a global rise, pledging to freeze prices by the end of the fiscal year in June. The move has added to pressure on Pakistan’s chronic budget deficit and balance of payments problems. This week, the rupee fell to historic lows against the US dollar and the State Bank of Pakistan sharply raised interest rates in an emergency meeting. “Part of it was the situation they inherited from the previous government and part of it was, of course, COVID,” said Shahrukh Wani, an economist at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. “But the government quickly fell into the fire and the reforms never started.” For Khan’s former allies, such as Chan, discontent among voters in the constituency had been reversed. “Inflation, the lack of fertilizers, the local government in Punjab, the policing, it was all too much,” Chan said. Within parliament, the loss of Allied support reversed the numbers for Khan. The BAP, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) represent less than five per cent of the 342-member National Assembly. But by pledging to support the no-confidence vote against Khan, the coalition allies have effectively ended Khan’s three-and-a-half years as prime minister. Opposition parties have stated they will not run in the by-elections. Meanwhile, the economy remains miserable. “The two biggest economic challenges facing Pakistan right now are high inflation and rapid depletion of foreign exchange reserves,” said Miftah Ismail, a former PML-N finance minister who is expected to repeat his position in 2018. . “The difficulty is that as the currency depreciates due to declining reserves, it causes even higher inflation.”
The role of the military
With the confirmation of Khan’s departure, the former allies are becoming increasingly honest about Pakistan’s third railway policy: politico-military relations. The prime minister’s parliamentary support began to wane when the military signaled that it would not side with Han against the opposition, a policy of so-called neutrality. “Once the establishment became neutral, the allies saw that the government would not survive,” said BAP Sen. Kakar. “Once the idea that he could not stay was established, it was just a matter of time.” Khan is the latest in a long line of Pakistani prime ministers to clash with the military over key appointments and foreign policy. In October, tacit political-military tensions erupted in public when Khan tried to keep Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed as military espionage chief, rejecting army chief candidate General Qamar Bajwa. General Bajwa’s candidate, Lt. Gen. Nadeem Anjum, was eventually appointed as the new director general of Inter-Service Intelligence, but the weeks-long controversy was bruised and ominous. General Bajwa’s second term as army chief will end in November, with General Hameed one of the senior generals to replace him. Pakistan’s PM appoints army chief Also outstanding was Khan’s attempt to reshape ties with the United States, Pakistan’s largest trading partner and a divided ally that the military sought to maintain as a key partner. In February, pursuing what Khan described as a neutral foreign policy, Khan traveled to Russia seeking trade deals on the eve of the Russian 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 escalated as Khan made a high-risk domestic turnaround. Faced with the defeat in a no-confidence vote in parliament, Hahn backed a US-led conspiracy to oust him as punishment for his trip to Russia and his neutral foreign policy. As evidence of the conspiracy, Khan sent a letter to a public gathering in Islamabad on March 27, claiming that the United States had issued a diplomatic warning to Pakistan to remove him from the post of prime minister. The diplomatic mission, the alleged US threat and Khan’s claim that the impeachment was part of a US-led conspiracy have disrupted Pakistan’s political and military-military relations. Retired General Athar Abbas, a former military spokesman and Pakistan’s ambassador to Ukraine from 2015 to 2018, said: “The letter justified a strong response and corrective action. Answer [in the military] it is questionable whether it should have been used to interfere in the vote of no confidence. “ General Abbas also described a number of differences between Khan and the military leadership that had accumulated during Khan’s term, including the poor political and financial management by Khan, which acted as a brake on the army’s public image. Regarding Khan’s opposition to military operations inside Pakistan and US-led wars internationally since the 9/11 attacks, General Abbas said: “The prime minister’s position on the war on terror is that we fought the war on terror. America and we had a loss of men and equipment. The military view was that it was the result of the war in Afghanistan and we had no choice. “The pressure on the military leadership is if it was America’s war, then all the sacrifices of young officers and soldiers were lost,” Abbas said. Another retired military official, Air Force Lt. Gen. Shahzad Chaudhry, suggested that tensions with the military also affected Khan’s style of governing. “In matters of politics, Khan could be a plumber. There was no predictability or stability. “Imran Khan is a populist, that is his vulnerability.” Defeated inside parliament and appealed outside, Khan is unlikely to be a politically expended force. The cyclical nature of Pakistani politics has seen former prime ministers recover in the past. Khan also has the advantage of returning to power from a fertile political base. Chan, a former special assistant to the prime minister, said: “A month ago, people were abusing [Khan and the PTI government] for inflation. “Now, they say, they have defended a proud and independent Pakistan.”
