Has Pakistan cricket hero Khan opened political Pandora’s box?

TOKYO — At first glance, Pakistan’s recent general election seemed like a tempest in a teapot, but a closer look reveals signs of a political hurricane that could rock the nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people, the world’s fifth largest.

Following February’s vote for the 336-seat National Assembly, Shahbaz Sharif was reappointed prime minister on March 3. The country’s power structure seems to have changed little from before the dissolution of the lower house in August: It is still led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), with the military’s strong backing. Still, the ballot results were a big surprise.

Contrary to the predicted landslide by the governing coalition, independent candidates backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party led by Imran Khan, a former prime minister and cricket superstar, won the largest number of seats, at 95.

Pakistan’s two dynastic parties, Sharif’s PML-N and the Bhutto family’s PPP, both fell far short of expectations. The PML-N won only 75 seats, while the PPP took just 54. The ruling camp held on to power only by forging a coalition again.

Khan, the leader of the PTI, first rose to international fame on the cricket pitch in the late 1970s, captaining Pakistan to its only World Cup victory in 1992.

Khan pauses during an interview with Reuters in Lahore in March 2023.    © Reuters

In April 2022, Khan was ousted as prime minister in a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly. The military, which was at loggerheads with Khan over its leadership, backed Sharif as his successor. Enraged, Khan exhorted his supporters to demand the early dissolution of the legislature and a snap election.

In May 2023, Khan’s arrest on corruption charges led to violence by his supporters, deepening civil unrest. The military then began blatantly suppressing Khan’s supporters to foil his comeback.

Not only did the court’s guilty verdict bar Khan from running for office, his party was also shut out of the election on procedural grounds, forcing its candidates to run as independents. The military is believed to have put pressure on the judiciary and the election commission to ensure this outcome.

Just before election day, Khan was convicted on three more charges, including leaking national secrets and engaging in an illegal marriage. All told, he was sentenced to 31 years in prison. But despite these legal obstacles, the PTI pulled off a stunning upset, winning a plurality of seats, though not an outright majority.

“The results … confirmed voters’ weariness with the political elite and dynastic politics, as well as with the meddling — both overt and covert — by the country’s generals,” said Husain Haqqani, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a U.S. think tank.

The history of Pakistani politics has been marred by ceaseless military meddling and elite control.

When Pakistan broke away from India and became independent in 1947, it adopted a parliamentary system modeled on Britain, which had ruled India as a colony. But the country suffered military coups in 1958, 1977 and 1999, with military regimes running the country for more than 30 of its 77 years as an independent nation.

Intermittent civilian governments were led by the PPP, founded in 1967 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who later became president and prime minister, and by the PML-N, established by Nawaz Sharif, Shahbaz’s elder brother, in 1986. The PPP produced several national leaders from the Bhutto family, including Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister in the Muslim world. She was assassinated in 2007. The party is now led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a former foreign minister and son of Benazir Bhutto and President Asif Ali Zardari, who is serving his second term.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, left, and former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari: Pakistani politics has long been dynastic. (Source photos by Reuters)

Given that Nawaz Sharif has served as prime minister for three nonconsecutive terms, and that his brother is in his second term, the PML-N has been more the Sharif’s family business than a bona-fide political party. The two dynastic parties have taken turns governing the country.

The country’s transitions of power have always been triggered by the governing party’s deteriorating relations with the military. Even when the country is under civilian rule, the generals decide the government’s fate. Thus, according to one saying, “Every country has an army, but Pakistan’s army has a country.”

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh once formed a single country, but only Pakistan continues to experience flagrant interventions by the military. There are many reasons for that.

To begin with, Pakistan has lacked competent civilian leaders. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, its founding father, died of an illness a year after independence, while his right-hand man, Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister, was assassinated in 1951.

In India, independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru led the country for a long time after Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, while politics in Pakistan was dominated by lawmakers who put their personal gain above the national interest and devoted themselves to political wrangling.

Pakistan’s unusual geography at independence, which split the country into eastern and western wings bisected by India, also made governing difficult. In addition, conflicts with neighboring India and Afghanistan over borders, religion and ethnicity have scarred Pakistan’s political landscape. Facing internal and external threats, the country allocated a large portion of its budget to defense spending, which accounted for two-thirds of its current-account expenditures over the decade following independence.

The army, the only modern institution in the country, with 150,000 personnel, naturally saw itself as the guardian of the fledgling nation and started playing that self-appointed role on behalf of civilians, deepening its political involvement.

In 1971, Bangladesh, then called East Pakistan, broke away from Pakistan and became independent. The new country came under military rule after a coup, but once it began its transition to democracy in 1990, military interventions mostly ceased.

“A major political turning point for Bangladesh came in 1988, when the country started providing personnel to United Nations peacekeeping operations,” said Lailufar Yasmin, a professor at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

As of November 2023, a total of 6,197 Bangladeshi troops were serving in peacekeeping missions, making the country the second-largest contributor of people to these operations. For Bangladesh, long one of the world’s poorest countries, participation in the U.N. peacekeeping offered a precious source of income for the government, as well its soldiers.

Bangladesh thus has a strong incentive to resist military rule, which could disqualify it from these missions. It is feared that soldiers would grow disgruntled and restless if deprived of opportunities to make extra cash.

Pakistan’s situation is different. The Pakistani military owns a broad array of businesses through the pension fund for veterans, and is said to account for 20% of the country’s gross domestic product. It staged coups in 1977 and 1999, but rather than facing economic sanctions from the West, it saw large inflows of financial aid as the 1977 coup was followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the 1999 takeover took place shortly before the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

The U.S. and European countries supported Pakistan as it was on the front line in the struggle against terrorism and armed aggression. The financial resources of the military, meanwhile, sustained its political interference.

Khan emerged as an agent of change. He was a breath of fresh air in a country where the elite controlled politics and the military frequently meddled in national affairs. Portraying himself as a reformer and an alternative to entrenched dynasties, Khan entered politics by founding the PTI in 1996, gradually expanding his support base.

The PTI became the third-largest bloc in the National Assembly in the 2013 general election. After winning the most seats but falling short of a majority in the 2018 poll, it formed a coalition with smaller parties, bringing Khan to power. Voters welcomed his campaign on a reformist and anti-corruption platform under the slogan “A New Pakistan.”

“Initially he received backing from the military, but even more, he was enthusiastically supported by the younger generation,” said professor Aeka Inoue of Shujitsu University in Japan. “In addition to his fame as a cricket star, his background — being neither a capitalist nor a landlord, unlike existing mainstream politicians — was appealing.”

Nonetheless, Khan struggled to meet public expectations. The country became saddled with a heavy debt burden from China-backed infrastructure investments, a problem compounded by inflation caused by the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the government failed to counter the triple whammy of foreign currency shortages, inflation and currency devaluation, the public grew disillusioned with Khan.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, left, and Army Chief of Staff Asim Munir attend a funeral in March for troops killed by militants near the Afghanistan border.   © Reuters

On the diplomatic front, Khan’s support for the Taliban, the Islamist militant group that had taken control of Afghanistan, led to confrontation with the U.S. He also antagonized the military by seeking closer ties with China and Russia. The final straw was his interference in personnel matters linked to military intelligence. Khan’s relationship with the armed forces soured quickly.

Khan’s signature anti-corruption drive also attracted criticism as a “witch hunt” aimed at eliminating rivals. But ironically, despite a series of missteps and blunders, he has come to be seen as the embodiment of reform, as he was ousted by conservative forces from the military and the dynastic elite.

Now the tide seems to favor Khan. Pakistan’s population is young, with an average age of 23, and 21 million voters were added to the electoral rolls in the last five years. The turnout in the latest election was 48%, not much different from the 52% posted in the previous vote in 2018.

Many young voters, undeterred by government repression, chose PTI-affiliated members for parliament. In doing so, they showed their frustration with the political status-quo perpetuated by the old guard and entrenched interests. It remains to be seen whether the clash between the new and old generations can be settled without political upheaval.

Defiant even in prison, Khan may have opened a Pandora’s box that could upend the country’s power structure.

source : asia.nikkei