Editorial: Chronicle of chaos foretold

Imran Khan’s arrest will multiply the challenges that Pakistan is grappling with on all fronts

With the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan in a corruption case and his subsequent disqualification from running for office, Pakistan has plunged into political chaos ahead of national elections. The key message emerging from the development is that the all-powerful military establishment continues to control the country’s destiny and that whoever antagonises the Rawalpindi bosses would bite the dust. Pakistan’s turbulent history is replete with instances where the fate of the civilian leaders is inexorably linked to the whims of the army. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a popular leader, was ousted in a coup in 1977 and executed after imprisonment. His daughter, Benazir, who also served as prime minister, was convicted in corruption cases and exiled. When she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to contest elections, she was assassinated during the campaign. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, ousted in a coup and jailed by General Musharraf in 1999, was re-elected with a huge mandate in 2013. He was then dismissed on flimsy charges by a military-judicial coup in 2017, barred from contesting elections and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He managed to get a reprieve on health grounds and is currently staying in London. However, unlike his predecessors, Imran Khan dared to take on the military leadership and made public accusations against the army chief ever since he was ousted from power through a no-confidence vote in April last year. In the last few months, the army engineered major defections by senior leaders from Imran’s party — Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI).

It is ironic that Imran, the charismatic cricketer-turned-politician, was propped up by the army after ousting Nawaz Sharif in 2017 but the relations turned sour soon after. His troubles have only multiplied since losing power, culminating in the Islamabad trial court handing down a three-year prison sentence for a crime that is widely seen as trivial. The charge against him is that he had failed to correctly declare certain gifts he had received during his tenure as prime minister. His earlier arrest in May in another corruption case was declared illegal by the Supreme Court. It had triggered widespread violence across the country. This time, however, the response has been muted. Imran’s meteoric rise and an equally drastic fall illustrate a predictable political trend in Pakistan where the army alone is in the driver’s seat and gets to decide how much democracy the legislators can exercise. Imran’s arrest will only multiply the challenges that the country is grappling with on political, economic and security fronts. The National Assembly is set to be dissolved on August 9 and a caretaker government will be put in place to oversee the elections. It is clear that the PTI leader’s arrest was planned to prevent him from contesting elections and that the two major political parties led by the Sharif and Bhutto-Zardari clans are in cahoots with Rawalpindi bosses on this issue.

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