Imran voted out

On the date it was passed by the National Assembly of Pakistan in 1973, the constitution of Pakistan prevailed early Sunday morning as Imran Khan became the first prime minister in Pakistan to have been voted out by parliament as per the right granted to them by the constitution of Pakistan. It could have all gone so differently. The prime minister could have attended the National Assembly session right on Saturday morning when it was convened; the speaker could have followed the Supreme Court’s directives and held the count for the vote of no-confidence; and the ruling party and its PM could have managed some semblance of dignity on their way out. But, in keeping with the past nearly four years in government, the PTI and Imran Khan decided to delay the NA session as much as they could via adjournments and not allowing the vote of no-confidence to go ahead. PTI ministers in parliament continued to use the foreign conspiracy angle to paint the no-confidence motion as orchestrated by the US; and the joint opposition sat in parliament from 10:30am on Saturday well past midnight as all of Pakistan watched an unbelievable circus that continuously moved between the farcical and the tragic. A city like Islamabad that leaks rumours every second saw its fair share of these: most of which revolved around coups, and talk of emergency and NROs for Imran Khan. Eventually, with the speaker’s resignation and the rumours being put to rest for a while, what was supposed to happen on April 3 finally took place. That it took a Supreme Court intervention, and then a chaotic day which saw the SC and IHC again opening their doors late at night is an unfortunately accurate reflection of the way the PTI has run its regime: with scant regard for any procedure or respect for institutional dignity.

Pakistan has been used to dictators making last-ditch efforts when they see power slipping away and when their rule is about to end. Politicians know that they do not have a shelf-life so they live to fight another day and wait for the power of the ballot to speak for them. But to see a civilian leader resort to these tactics, subverting the constitution and not allowing a vote of no-confidence to take place was simply mind-boggling and disappointing after such a long struggle for continuous democratic transitions in the country. Other than the historic verdict on April 7, there is really no win in what happened the past few days. We saw a prime minister choose power over the constitution. We saw an attempt at disregarding an order by the highest court of the land. Essentially, the country, its constitution, its parliament seemed to all have been held hostage to the whims of one man who refused to accept the verdict of his peers. The fact that the PTI chose to go down such a dangerous route – and will probably be sticking to it if it does indeed go into elections with the enthusiasm it claims it has for electoral politics – should be alarming for anyone worried about the already-divisive nature of politics the party has advocated over the past few years.

Going by what Imran Khan had said over the past few days, if the PTI does take its protests to the streets and continues to insist it has been ousted through a conspiracy, one hopes there is at least some introspection within their ranks on where they went wrong during their time in government. Why did their allies leave them? Why did their own members feel alienated? Given the party’s history and proclivity for refusing to acknowledge its mistakes, that is unlikely. However, just the mantra of conspiracy may not work for too long, and there will no doubt now be far more questions regarding the lack of evidence in these allegations; the issue of the now-declassified ‘letter’ is yet to be resolved. At the end, it is all the more tragic that someone who is said to have politicized the younger generation refused to bow out with grace and has instead managed to steer his supporters towards more apathy for the constitution and democracy, introducing violent discourse into politics. Imran Khan started his time in office after a most controversial election and fittingly ended it in a Trumpesque manner. We hope the next few days are not marred by the sort of protests Imran Khan had hinted at during his speeches the past few days. The opposition now has a long road ahead of it: it faces a debilitating economy, a polarized society, a former prime minister who can’t see the difference between bravery and petulance and who leaves behind a legacy of political animosity, and a foreign policy that needs to be healed. May the curse of ‘interesting times’ finally be over for Pakistan.