WASHINGTON: The fate of former prime minister Imran Khan remains the central political question facing Pakistan nearly four months after he was convicted and jailed for corruption. According to The Wall Street Journal, former prime minister’s supporters see him as their crisis-ridden country’s last best hope despite all opposition to prevent his return to power.
The journal says that should Khan, a national hero in Pakistan, beat the odds and prevail, it would not signal revival. Instead, it will likely hasten the precipitous decline of the nuclear-armed country of 240 million people, the reports adds. The 71-year-old Khan’s appeal to voters is easy to understand. In his more than five decades in the public eye — as a swashbuckling cricketer, high-minded philanthropist who constructed a cancer hospital in his mother’s memory, and dogged politician — Khan has built arguably the most powerful political brand in the country’s history.
In a land not exactly known for honest public servants, Khan has earned a reputation for personal probity. And unlike many other Pakistanis from a Westernized background — he was educated at Oxford and was married to the British heiress Jemima Goldsmith — the former prime minister wears his piety on his sleeve. While in office from 2018 to 2022, he raised the issue of “Islamophobia” at the United Nations and criticized France and the Netherlands, among other nations, for what he saw as unfair attacks on Islam.
For many Pakistanis, Khan’s role as captain of their World Cup-winning cricket team in 1992 has indelibly stamped him as a natural leader of men. The PTI can draw on an endless reserve of video clips to fuel his legend among voters too young to have witnessed his athletic prowess firsthand. Unlike many Pakistani politicians, whose gaucherie can be embarrassing to their educated compatriots, Khan appears as much at ease in London’s Knightsbridge as among his fellow Pashtun tribesmen in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. No other subcontinental politician can traverse contrasting worlds with such apparent comfort.
In another country, the journal says, Khan would be a shoo-in for re-election, but Pakistan’s leaders are chosen by more than voters. The establishment has long played an outsize role in politics and gave Khan a big assist to become prime minister in 2018, but now the situation is different.
Khan lost power in 2022 after a spectacular falling-out with the former army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. This May, PTI supporters attacked multiple army installations and a senior general’s home to protest Khan’s arrest in a corruption case that’s still under way. Authorities responded by arresting thousands of PTI workers and leaders, arm-twisting senior politicians to abandon the party, and imposing a sweeping media blackout on Khan. All told he faces about 200 cases, ranging from contempt of court to terrorism. The former prime minister denies all charges, but if he can’t successfully appeal his corruption conviction, he is ineligible to run for a seat in parliament or become prime minister again for five years.
For almost any other Pakistani politician, taking the establishment on so forcefully would have been a certain career-ender. But for Khan it could be a boost. It adds a patina of righteous suffering to his already compelling life story. Even if he can’t run for office at the moment, if his party sweeps the election next year, those at the helm may be forced to allow Khan to regain power.
That would be a disaster for Pakistan. Though Khan’s hold on voters’ imagination is understandable, his brand of messianic populism represents a dead end for his country. He may promise a fresh start for Pakistan, but he represents a repackaging of ideas that have already failed — pan-Islamism, anti-Americanism and left-wing economics.
A victory for Khan would damage Pakistan’s ties with the US, the country’s top export destination and the most important member of the International Monetary Fund, whose loans Pakistan needs to remain solvent.
Khan’s obsession with Kashmir, a disputed territory claimed by both Pakistan and India, is another unhelpful throwback to an era when Pakistan sought parity with India. His maximalist position on the issue may endear him to Pakistani hawks, but it prevents the country from coming to terms with its much larger neighbour — whose economy is nine times as large as Pakistan’s and growing much faster. To progress, Pakistan requires peace with India, not permanent confrontation.
With domestic terrorism surging, per capita income stagnant, inflation running at close to 30 per cent, and jobless Pakistanis swelling the ranks of illegal migrants to Europe, Pakistan badly needs sober leadership. Rather than a charismatic spokesman for failed ideas, it needs a leader who is willing to challenge shibboleths. This means less grandstanding about so-called Western Islamophobia, and more focus on pulling Pakistan’s people out of poverty. Imran Khan isn’t the man to do that.