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The Economist: Pakistan’s perma-crisis

Mirzali Khan

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Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, must be free to contest timely elections​

Imran Khan was a terrible prime minister. In office from 2018-2022, the Pakistani cricket star turned populist leader appointed corrupt ministers, locked up his opponents and hounded the press. As Pakistanis rapidly went off him, he peddled desperate anti-American conspiracy theories. Had his government limped on to the general election due later this year, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (pti) party would probably have been trounced.

That is how democracy is supposed to work. Bad governments get summarily ejected. Fear of a reckoning encourages politicians to do better. One government’s failures are a lesson to its successors. Yet Pakistan, tragically, has experienced little if any of that. Its arrogant generals, the real power in the country of 240m, have not permitted a prime minister to complete a five-year term. Mr Khan, an erstwhile military favourite, was handed power after the generals toppled his predecessor, and was then himself dismissed last year following an army-orchestrated no-confidence vote. Thereby, the generals helped turn a failed politician into a populist hero, whose rabble-rousing has become a threat to order, even as Pakistan faces a balance-of-payments crisis. It is a textbook example of the incompetence, as well as power-hunger, of the men who presume to run the world’s fifth-most-populous country.


Were Mr Khan’s party allowed to contest the scheduled election, he would now probably be swept back to power in Islamabad. So the army intervened again. It had him charged with multiple crimes, from blasphemy to terrorism, and placed under de facto house arrest, and then set about dismantling his party. Thousands of PTI activists have been arrested and most of the party’s senior leaders leant on to renounce Mr Khan. Whether the generals will even let the election go ahead is unclear.

Pakistan’s woeful governance is a direct consequence of such military meddling. The country’s political parties, as the PTI is now demonstrating, are shifting bands of opportunists, their members united by little more than an appetite to capitalise on whatever brief opportunity to get rich the generals afford them. Its governments, formed at the army’s behest and in the knowledge that they are unlikely to last a full term, have little incentive to take tough political decisions. No wonder the current administration of Shehbaz Sharif has balked at the eye-watering tax rises and subsidy cuts that the imf is demanding for its latest bail-out of Pakistan, which would be the 23rd. The courts, an instrument of army control, are often intimidated and corrupted by the generals’ fixer-spies. Ditto the media.

The cost of the dysfunction is incalculable. Dominated by the agriculturally rich state of Punjab, Pakistan was for a long time a match for its much bigger Indian rival. Its army arguably lost four wars against India, but narrowly. Its cricketers were better than their neighbour’s. In 1990 the two countries’ average income per head was almost the same. Now Indians are, on average, 50% richer than Pakistanis. And whereas India is fast becoming a global power, Pakistan, beset by economic, environmental and social crises that its governments scarcely seem to comprehend, has become a global menace. It is abysmally governed, violent, unstable and nuclear-armed. Owing to the public anger Mr Khan is whipping up, it is now also at risk of civil strife. All this in a country whose population is projected to be more than 100m bigger in 2050 than it is today.

This mess has only one solution. The generals must, once and for all, get out of politics. Pakistan otherwise has no chance of getting the better governments it needs and deserves. The time for this is now. The election should be held to schedule and Mr Khan and his party—unimpressive though they are—be free to contest it. It is for Pakistani voters to choose who should govern them. They could scarcely choose worse than their turkey-cocking generals. Those self-appointed guardians of Pakistan have done little except lower, weaken and immiserate it.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Soldiers, go home"


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Exactly the same theme as the Guardian article. It’s almost as if all the British papers are following directions from the Foreign Office. Abuse Imran Khan and abuse the generals even more.

What they don’t mention is that under PTI the economy was doing relatively well, considering that 2 out of 3.5 years were spent fighting COVID. It would have done even better if the government was allowed to continue.

It’s clear as daylight that the British and American policy was to let the generals impose a minus Imran Khan policy. They stayed quiet for a long time but now that the generals have obviously failed they’re left with no choice but to demand elections. After all, they pretend to be guardians of democracy around the world.

They have a similar negative view of Imran Khan as of Turkey’s Erdogan. They tried to overthrow Erdogan and when they failed they started hoping that he would lose the elections. They sound very unhappy that Imran Khan is likely to win.
 
the junta is acting like pharaoh's. it thinks it above any law. the law of the universe will deal with it.
 

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, must be free to contest timely elections​

Imran Khan was a terrible prime minister. In office from 2018-2022, the Pakistani cricket star turned populist leader appointed corrupt ministers, locked up his opponents and hounded the press. As Pakistanis rapidly went off him, he peddled desperate anti-American conspiracy theories. Had his government limped on to the general election due later this year, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (pti) party would probably have been trounced.
@Tamerlane already said what I was thinking, and in much better words.

However, I do want to ask, why does almost every article out of the West on Pakistan's crisis seem to have the obligatory Imran-bashing/both-siding? He's no angel but is "context" a term these so-called journalists understand at all.

They are talking about IK's corrupt ministers, his locking up of opponents, and hounding of the press NOW? Now when the almost all the corrupt have gathered under a single banner and are in govt. When atrocities that words fail to describe are taking place against citizens, opposition and journalists. Threats, private videos, abductions, torture, killings, wholesale terror unleashed on every dissenting voice, even mild ones? When the fricking purge is going on?

Is bad-mouthing IK, the western establishments' way of telling it's concerned citizens that "don't mind them. they are all bad" so they don't have to do "promote democracy" for Pakistan the way they are doing for, say, Bangladesh, which has an unfavorable party in govt?

@Bleek @AlKardai @313ghazi , @Mirzali Khan
 
@Tamerlane already said what I was thinking, and in much better words.

However, I do want to ask, why does almost every article out of the West on Pakistan's crisis seem to have the obligatory Imran-bashing/both-siding? He's no angel but is "context" a term these so-called journalists understand at all.

They are talking about IK's corrupt ministers, his locking up of opponents, and hounding of the press NOW? Now when the almost all the corrupt have gathered under a single banner and are in govt. When atrocities that words fail to describe are taking place against citizens, opposition and journalists. Threats, private videos, abductions, torture, killings, wholesale terror unleashed on every dissenting voice, even mild ones? When the fricking purge is going on?

Is bad-mouthing IK, the western establishments' way of telling it's concerned citizens that "don't mind them. they are all bad" so they don't have to do "promote democracy" for Pakistan the way they are doing for, say, Bangladesh, which has an unfavorable party in govt?

@Bleek @AlKardai @313ghazi , @Mirzali Khan

1. It's an easy target. All that dumb stuff did happen during the PTI tenure and we know agencies were behind it and PTI didn't exactly stop them. Nobody in Pakistan has the political capital to stop the establishment.

2. They always play both sides until one side submits to enough of thier demands to make it worthwhile backing then. Western media is a state tool.
 
@Tamerlane already said what I was thinking, and in much better words.

However, I do want to ask, why does almost every article out of the West on Pakistan's crisis seem to have the obligatory Imran-bashing/both-siding? He's no angel but is "context" a term these so-called journalists understand at all.

They are talking about IK's corrupt ministers, his locking up of opponents, and hounding of the press NOW? Now when the almost all the corrupt have gathered under a single banner and are in govt. When atrocities that words fail to describe are taking place against citizens, opposition and journalists. Threats, private videos, abductions, torture, killings, wholesale terror unleashed on every dissenting voice, even mild ones? When the fricking purge is going on?

Is bad-mouthing IK, the western establishments' way of telling it's concerned citizens that "don't mind them. they are all bad" so they don't have to do "promote democracy" for Pakistan the way they are doing for, say, Bangladesh, which has an unfavorable party in govt?

@Bleek @AlKardai @313ghazi , @Mirzali Khan
It's good to do some both-siding, so you neither become the enemy of the state nor charge the people
 
They are talking about IK's corrupt ministers, his locking up of opponents, and hounding of the press NOW? Now when the almost all the corrupt have gathered under a single banner and are in govt. When atrocities that words fail to describe are taking place against citizens, opposition and journalists. Threats, private videos, abductions, torture, killings, wholesale terror unleashed on every dissenting voice, even mild ones? When the fricking purge is going on?
There was plenty of international press against PTI's violation of justice back then but it was dismissed as propaganda. The int'l press has also made a fuss about the establishment's crusade against IK as seen here.
 
There was plenty of international press against PTI's violation of justice back then but it was dismissed as propaganda. The int'l press has also made a fuss about the establishment's crusade against IK as seen here.
One noticeable difference is that the Establishment was with PTI back then but not now.
And the estb. is still dismissing it all as propaganda. Read the FO's rebuttal on the 65 Reps letter to Blinken.

My gripe is that the scale of the abuses is off the charts this time around, yet the intl. media is religiously both-siding the issues. Seems to me their govt's way of calming their citizens concerns by painting both sides as bad. Otherwise, we'd hear calls for freeing Pakistan's oppressed citizens from a tryrannical govt and promoting shared values such as democracy and hooman rights
 
To all those criticizing IK and his crooks
It’s doesn’t matter if all his ministers were gay and in bed with each other
What matters is if the life of citizens was getter better via economy, jobs, health, education, housing, law order, justice etc

And as someone mentioned, the western interest can’t have independent leader leading a nation and will use all its power to remove him
e.g Liaquat Ali Khan
 
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