Pakistan in turmoil after poll

On Tuesday 13 February Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), together with other smaller parties, agreed to form a coalition government, the main aim of which is to prevent supporters of Imran Khan taking control of the state.

Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, or Pakistan Movement for Justice), has been heavily repressed and its candidates were forced to run as independents in the 8 February general election. Nevertheless, PTI ran an effective social media campaign and out-performed the army-backed PML-N. Sharif had been expected to win easily, but the PTI got the most votes and the most seats, although fell short of an absolute parliamentary majority.

Independent candidates, mostly backed by PTI, won 101 seats of the 266 directly elected constituency seats in the National Assembly (other seats are reserved for minorities and women). Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N has won 75 seats and former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto’s PPP has won 54 seats.

The PPP will not take any ministerial positions in the new administration as Bhutto appears to be wary of being too close to what will be an unpopular government.

Khan’s party also alleges widespread ballot rigging in favour of Sharif. The US, UK and EU have all openly doubted the fairness of the election. On election day the state imposed a mobile and internet blackout.

The election results are a rebuke for Sharif, who has been Prime Minister three times previously. Sharif has been regularly accused of corruption, in particular following the Panama Papers leak in 2016, after his children were named for holding secret off-shore bank accounts.

Pakistan ranks 133 from 180 states in Transparency International’s corruption index.

The poll results are also a blow aimed at the powerful Pakistani military and the secret intelligence service, the notorious ISI. Since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the military has either ruled directly or intervened and manipulated Pakistan’s election results and the administration of governments.

Following military coups the army was directly in power from 1958-71, 1977-88 and 1999-2008.

In 2022 the outgoing Pakistan military chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, admitted that the military had, “constantly meddled in politics for the last 70 years.” Bajwa promised that interference would end. Predictably that pledge turned out to be untrue.

Imran Khan has originally founded PTI in 1996 as a pro-Western, modernising party. He was then a world-famous cricket all-rounder, Oxford-educated, and an ostentatious playboy who had married into the British aristocracy. Ten years later, after 9/11, the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Iraq war, Khan repositioned himself as a devout Muslim who was highly critical of the West.

Khan was brought to power in 2018, with the military’s backing, promising clean government. However, corruption increased. He heavily repressed opposition parties and independent media, and ran a pro-army administration. In 2021 he began to move against the army, and the army struck back.

Khan was arrested on 9 May 2023 and sentenced to three years in jail on corruption charges. His supporters then overran the plush homes, within gated estates, of leading army generals, exposing the great wealth these parasites have gathered over decades.

In January 2024 Khan was sentenced to ten years in jail for leaking state secrets.

Unfortunately for Pakistan’s working class there is little difference between the contending parties who in power enrich themselves and protect the army’s behind-the-scenes dominance. The vote for the PTI was a vote in opposition to corruption and incompetent government. But Khan and the PTI are incapable of delivering that. Annual inflation is running at 28%. 42% of the population are illiterate and more than 95mn of Pakistan’s 240mn population live in desperate poverty. Islamist terrorist bombings regularly take place.

In June 2023 the government was close to defaulting on its debt and was bailed out with $3bn loan from the IMF. Some of that money has been handed over already, but the IMF is stalling on further payments, which it says must be negotiated by a new government.

Pakistan’s debt currently stands at $100bn.