ince the ouster of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) government through a no-confidence motion in April 2022, the country’s political horizon has been exhibiting extremes of noise and confusion, with no end in sight so far. This muddle is the result of Imran Khan’s aggressive campaign against the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government and the now retired COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa for ‘ditching’ Imran. The received wisdom is that Imran Khan lost the backing of the military establishment in 2021 over the appointment of a new ISI chief to replace Lt-Gen Faiz Hameed (now retired), whom Imran insisted on retaining. The fact is that Hameed had to take command of a corps in order to be eligible for appointment as COAS. He was thus appointed the Peshawar Corps commander over Imran’s objections and foot dragging on the appointment of the new ISI chief. This episode was certainly a turning point in the Imran Khan-military establishment relationship.

However, it can be argued that while the ISI chief issue may have proved the last straw for the military establishment accused of manipulating the 2018 general elections to bring Imran Khan to power, a whole series of reservations about Imran Khan’s handling of the economy (e.g. 70 percent increase in borrowing in four years as compared to the previous 70 years), foreign relations (alienating the US, China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), accountability (not a single case initiated by Imran Khan’s government through the National Accountability Bureau could be proved), and politics (virtually ignoring parliament, hitting new lows in language and conduct towards the opposition) may have fed into the military establishment’s growing alarm about the direction the country appeared to be heading in. Not the least of the military’s worries was the pressure on the defence budget because of bad economic performance.

Urban legend has it that once the establishment had decided it could no longer support Imran Khan, it may have ‘facilitated’ the ship jumping by 20 PTI MNAs during the no-confidence vote. Immediately after his ouster, Imran Khan came out with guns blazing against his erstwhile backers (and the US, claimed to be behind the ‘conspiracy’ to oust him). This unprecedented diatribe against the (now retired) COAS and other top military commanders was highly offensive to the institution and highly embarrassing. Gen Bajwa left under a cloud because of this denouement, and it is only now, after the change of command has been completed, that Imran Khan and the PTI have called a ‘ceasefire’ in a transparent attempt to mend fences with the new command.

Imran Khan’s attempts to turn the tables on the government and the establishment through street power (public rallies, the long march, street rallies once again) have not yielded the results he may have hoped for. The long march more or less fizzled out after the Wazirabad attack in which Imran Khan was wounded. Street rallies are unlikely in the prevailing atmosphere to mount enough pressure on an increasingly determined government to hold early general elections.

Actually, the main actors in the ouster of Imran Khan were not equally motivated to go ahead with the no-confidence move. The Pakistan Peoples Party chief Asif Zardari was determined to see the back of Imran Khan as was the Jamiat-i-Ulema-Islam-Fazl’s Maulana Fazlur Rehman. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) was, however, arguably of two minds. Nawaz Sharif was of the view that it would be better to leave Imran Khan in place till the end of his term (August 2023) as his deteriorating political graph would by then have seen him fall totally flat on his place, providing the opposition as a whole a clear road to victory in the 2023 general elections. Zardari and Shahbaz Sharif were committed to get rid of the corruption cases filed against them during the PTI tenure. The latter may also have been motivated by the ambition (in the absence of the elder brother) to secure the prime ministership. However, despite its success in ousting Imran Khan, the PDM coalition has found itself burdened by the messy legacy of the PTI, contributing to a loss of political capital.

Imran Khan’s threat to dissolve the provincial assemblies in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa if his demand for early elections is not met is proving harder to execute than perhaps Imran had believed. Despite lip service to being bound by Imran Khan’s command, Chief Minister Parvez Elahi’s Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) seems reluctant to let go of power in the politically most important province. The rumour mill is also alleging that the CM has initiated contacts with the new army top brass, a proclivity Elahi has revealed the other day and which stretches back at least to 1983.

Until recently, the PML-N seemed not to be taking the assemblies’ dissolution threat too seriously. However, after examining the constitutional, legal and political options to prevent the dissolution happening, the PML-N seems to have come to the conclusion that this is not an easy task. They have now decided, on Nawaz Sharif’s directive, to prepare for the possibility that a dissolution may occur. Nawaz has asked the party’s Punjab chief, Rana Sanaullah, to initiate homework to identify suitable candidates for the Punjab, the PML-N’s traditional stronghold, in the event a dissolution and fresh election are unavoidable.

Whatever the role, past and present, of the main characters in this drama may have been, the country seems headed for a denouement that poses new, and at present unanswerable, dilemmas.

The writer is a veteran journalist who has held senior editorial positions in several newspapers