Pakistan crisis: The best course of action is to hold free and fair elections, even if it means Imran Khan returning as PM

There has been no let-up in the rising wave of terror within the country in spite of the government’s  frequent avowals of firm handling and demarches to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to check TTP terror from their territory.

The political logjam, resulting from former Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa’s  political engineering, persists. It adversely impacts governance, which has remained poor at the best of times, and Pakistan’s capacity to deal with its aforementioned challenges.

The Pakistan army has had the tradition of ruthlessly discarding its political proteges, who tried to cast away its yoke. However, populist Imran Khan threatens  to be the army’s comeuppance. An inept administrator, he was quite unpopular and saddled with a tanking economy, when former army chief Bajwa gave him a new lease of life by engineering his ouster from power in April 2022. His popularity has grown since then. In contrast, the governing Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition, notably its leading party PML(N), has lost considerable political capital due to the tough economic measures taken by it to fix the economy and the resulting hardship to the people. Traditionally the dominant political force in Punjab, PML(N) is not sure of its performance there. Hounded by judicial cases, its principal vote-getter, Nawaz Sharif, remains in exile.

Riding a wave of popularity, Imran Khan has been pushing for early elections. Having failed to force the PDM government to call an early election at the national level, he dissolved the assemblies of Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, ruled by his party, thereby necessitating elections within ninety days as per the constitution. A PTI victory in these provinces will compound PDM’s woes. Because of foot-dragging by the Chief Election Commissioner, who is a PDM sympathiser, it needed a Supreme Court order to fix the elections in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on April 30 and May 28 respectively. However,  there are reports of continued efforts by the government to delay them.

Supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan during a protest in Lahore. (Photo: AP)

Bereft of an effective political counter to Imran Khan, the PDM government has pursued the strategy of embroiling him in multiple accountability cases to obtain his conviction by a court and disqualify him from holding public office. The ongoing drama regarding his arrest has to be seen against this backdrop. This strategy has not been very successful so far because of Imran Khan’s defiance, the government’s half-heartedness due to the uncertainty concerning its political fallout, and the authorities’ inability to pin him down on something serious. The arrest warrant underlying the recent police action concerns allegations of misappropriation of gifts received by Imran Khan from foreign dignitaries during his time in office. However, a wider disclosure made by the government in compliance with  a judicial order shows that the conduct of most holders of high offices has not been above board in this area. A court in Islamabad has reiterated the arrest warrant and ordered Imran Khan’s appearance on March 18. Further judicial manoeuvres continue as the arrest saga unfolds. He may well be arrested.  However, there is no end in sight to the political logjam.

There is no sign of bridging the trust deficit between Imran Khan and army chief Asim Munir, who had been shunted out of DG(ISI)’s post within months by the former. There have been tell-tale signs of the army’s low-key support to the PDM government. Recently, ISI joined other security and intelligence agencies in telling the Election Commission that elections to the Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa assemblies could not be held  in April-May due to law and order problems. However, the army has so far refrained from doing the heavy lifting that the government may want of it to resolve the Imran Khan problem. Some reports attribute this to differences within the army. Asim Munir would also not be unmindful of the fact that the army is yet to recover from the  damage caused to its image during Bajwa’s closing years in office.

The best course of action for Pakistan would be to hold a free and fair election,  let the elected government function and be judged by the people in due course. This will most likely bring Imran Khan back to power. Any unconstitutional action by the Asim Munir-PDM combine to postpone the elections or rig them would only pave the way for a bigger crisis at a later date.

A supporter of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan takes photos in front of Khan’s poster painted on a truck. (Photo: AP)

What does all this mean for India?  Is Pakistan about to collapse?

Pakistan has been here before and pulled back from the brink. It may well do so this time too and continue its messy journey. However, each such crisis leaves the Pakistani state weaker and correspondingly more dangerous. Let’s also be clear that should Pakistan collapse, it will present us with a serious challenge. The Pakistani establishment has spawned myriad extremist and terrorist groups over the years but has also kept some check on them and fought some of them in its own interest. A collapsed Pakistan will confront us not only with a nuclear arsenal in an utterly volatile environment; as well as a veritable humanitarian crisis of large numbers fleeing unrest there, but also an unbridled sea of extremism and terrorism from Afghanistan’s western frontier right up to our western border. Unless Pakistan decides to help itself by changing its course, no other country can help it, least of all India because of the heavy baggage of the bilateral relationship. However, should its growing compulsions force the Pak establishment to imagine a more constructive future for the Pakistani state, we should be prepared to help it along that path.

The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan