- The military, which helped bring Khan to power, intervened after the prime minister downplayed the Covid-19 threat and opposed a lockdown
- Khan is under pressure to improve his government’s performance, and a massive sugar price-fixing scandal has further weakened his administration
Tom Hussain 9 Apr, 2020
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan is under increasing pressure from the military to improve the performance of his government, especially after his handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Photo: APPrime Minister Imran Khan has virtually lost control of Pakistan’s bureaucracy after the powerful military swept aside his objections to a nationwide lockdown and assumed control of efforts to curb the rapid spread of the coronavirus, officials said.
Khan’s 18-month-old administration has been further weakened by a massive corruption scandal, after his office on Sunday released the results of a federal investigation into sugar price-fixing.
It found that three of his close political aides – all mill owners – earned tens of millions of US dollars following a federal cabinet decision last July to allow the export of sugar. They had already benefited from a sizeable subsidy on domestic rates from the Punjab provincial government, which is also controlled by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party.
Khan conceded that he had chaired the cabinet meeting and approved the proposal because he thought it would benefit millions of farmers. Instead, the export of sugar, along with wheat flour, triggered nationwide shortages which practically doubled retail prices by January, and fuelled double-digit consumer price inflation rates in the midst of an economic slowdown.
Since then, Khan has been under increasing pressure from the military to improve the performance of his government, said Abbas Nasir, a London-based analyst and former Asia-Pacific executive editor for the BBC World Service.
The military has ruled Pakistan directly for half its 73-year history, and is considered the ultimate arbiter of political power.
“There has been constant nudging from the army chief [of staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa] and his intel chief for better governance,” said Nasir.
After the first confirmed coronavirus infection cluster in Pakistan was identified on March 12, Khan was reluctant to take drastic measures and downplayed the threat. In his first televised speech on the unfurling crisis on March 17, Khan said a shutdown would exacerbate Pakistan’s grinding poverty.
Behind the scenes, however, Bajwa was alarmed, according to civil servants who spoke to This Week In Asia on condition of anonymity, citing the threat of official disciplinary action.
They claimed that Bajwa contacted Azam Suleman, the chief secretary of Punjab and a retired army officer who reportedly trained with him at Pakistan’s premier military academy. Acting on Bajwa’s advice, Suleman apparently ignored instructions from Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to follow Khan’s policy of few restrictions on public movement, and made a formal request for assistance from the armed forces.
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Taking their lead from Punjab, the top bureaucrats of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial administrations led by the PTI followed suit, the officials said, while the opposition-led government of Sindh was already on board. Pakistan is divided into four provinces, each with a separate elected assembly and chief minister.
The federal interior ministry had no choice but to approve the requests because provincial governments enjoy administrative autonomy under Pakistan’s constitution.
The deployments were announced on March 23, Pakistan’s national day.
Khan, however, continued to oppose the partial shutdowns that troops were deployed to enforce until April 1, when Bajwa summoned a meeting of senior generals and cabinet ministers. Afterwards, Planning Minister Asad Umar announced that the military would oversee coordination of the state’s campaign to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
“The army is now firmly in charge of the administrative machinery, and will retain control for at least two months,” an Islamabad-based civil servant said.
An increase in testing led to a surge in Covid-19 infections in Pakistan, with over 4,000 cases and 61 deaths. The health services ministry has forecast the number of infections will exceed 50,000 by April 25, with 5,000-7,000 deaths.
A political analyst said the military was forced to intervene because Khan’s inept response to the pandemic amplified accusations that it colluded with partisan civil servants and judges to rig the 2018 elections in Khan’s favour.
“Imran Khan has proved to be a big disappointment for those who brought him to power and even those who supported him. His mishandling of the coronavirus crisis has been particularly jarring,” said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US, currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank.
“Given that the army backed him openly, Khan’s failures are reflecting poorly on the military leadership and they do not like that,” he said.This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Army not PM in control amid lockdown
Tom Hussain is an Islamabad-based journalist and Pakistan affairs analyst