On Sunday, Imran Khan received a no-confidence vote in Pakistan's parliament, losing his job as prime minister. The new prime minister is expected to be appointed soon on Monday.
One of the twin problems in Pakistan was resolved this week. One, not so much.
On Thursday, the country's highest court handed down a landmark decision that resolved a constitutional dispute that began last week. The court has criticized Prime Minister Imran Khan, a popular leader and former cricket star who is better known than a politician. Khan, a court ruled he had acted unconstitutionally when he dissolved the Pakistani Parliament last week to avoid losing power by a no-confidence vote.
It has been a shocking and reassuring decision, say the country's political experts, considering the record of the high court as Khan's former political ally. On Thursday, the court ruled in favor of the law.
But the political crisis that led to the landmark court order continues.
Khan has surprisingly blamed opposition efforts to oust him from the US-led conspiracy. Now, Parliament has been reinstated and will continue with its no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Khan on Saturday, which could lead to his ouster from the polls later this year. Khan said he would "fight for himself".
The broader political crisis, however, could be traced back to the 2018 elections that put Khan in power. Traditionally, the military is the most important institution in Pakistan, and it has often intervened to overthrow elected leaders who got in their way. Khan's rise is inseparable from the military's political influence, and the incumbent prime minister has accused the military of plotting to overthrow the government by rigging the election in favor of Khan.
It was a “very controversial election,” says Asfandyar Mir, a researcher at the United States Institute of Peace. “There was a major question over the legitimacy of that electoral exercise and the government that Khan formed could just never escape the shadow of the controversy surrounding that election,” Mir explained.
Pakistan’s cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan speaks after casting his vote at a polling station during the general election in Islamabad on July 25, 2018. Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images
More recently, the relationship between the military and Khan has worsened, and that gave the political opposition an opening to act against him. Though it’s not known what role the military played in the supreme court’s ruling, experts note that the harshness of the court’s order suggests the military’s buy-in. “This is part of a larger history of instability in Pakistan in which prime ministers are ousted from power, because they lose the support of Pakistan’s military,” Madiha Afzal, foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Vox.
Khan’s position weakened domestically
The political and economic situation has set the stage for a challenge for Khan.
After joining a campaign that promised less corruption and more economic opportunity for the poor, Khan failed to deliver. Inflation is on the rise, unemployment is on the rise, and the International Monetary Fund's International Monetary Fund program has not helped stabilize issues. Last year's international survey on maritime money, known as the Pandora Papers, revealed that Khan's interior had moved money overseas to avoid taxes, contrary to Khan's popular rhetoric.
Khan spearheaded a month-long anti-corruption crackdown on opposition groups. Indeed the opposition parties, many of which are made up of royal leadership and old-fashioned families, are corrupt, and their efforts to oust Khan appear to be a stepping stone to avoid further scrutiny, Mir said.
Nevertheless, that anti-corruption effort thwarted the government. And it is part of Khan's powerful management system that has not worked.
Since his inception in politics Khan has relied on the courts. Yasser Kureshi, a constitutional researcher at Oxford University, says Khan has built his political career in supporting the judiciary. "Imran Khan's political platform is built on the anti-corruption movement, where he accuses the political party of corruption, and for the past 15 years the high court has been facing a legal case focusing on the political corruption of traditional Pakistani groups," he explains. "Khan has been a strong supporter of this law as he has enacted and made his politics legitimate."
Now, the court seems to have turned him around at a time when the military no longer trusts Khan. "With Imran Khan, I think his problem is that right now, he doesn't have the institutional solutions he can really turn to," Kureshi said.
Khan's relationship with the US has also cooled
Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country with a population of 220 million; his sixth largest war in the world, and powerful as a leader in the Islamic world. A longtime participant in the American war on terror, Pakistan has also been an opposition ally, sometimes criticized for supporting the Taliban.
Khan was elected in 2018, and Mir says that, two years ago, military relations have begun to cool down. Khan argued with the military commander over foreign policy issues, and the military saw Khan's mistreatment as a liability. Last year, Khan's delay in signing the new intelligence officer sparked speculation of further divisions between the two.
President Joe Biden did not call Khan in his first days in office, although he did call the Indian leader, Pakistan's main rival. "The cold shoulder of Biden 'management in Imran Khan rubbed him in the wrong way," Afzal said. "Pakistan has recently dropped a bit on the radar in terms of high-level engagement."
Khan's public messages as a powerful man are partly guilty of severing ties with the US - and moreover, his ties with the Pakistani military, which seeks to get closer to the US.
Recently, that coldness was exacerbated by Khan's decision to remain neutral in the Russian-Ukrainian war; Khan visited Moscow shortly before the Russian invasion.
And, now, he has turned to conspiracy theories: that the position of the opposition has been made by the US. The origin of Khan's claims looks like a cable ambassador the Pakistani ambassador to Washington sent home last month after a meeting with State Department official Donald Lu. Whatever criticism Lu may have conveyed about Pakistan's foreign policy, Khan's interpretation of the memorandum has come out in the open. "When it comes to those allegations, there is no truth to them," State Department spokesman Ned Price said last week.
It’s an open question whether his argument will resonate among a Pakistani populace who is suspicious of the United States. One group it’s likely not resonating with: Pakistan’s powerful military.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan (third from left) and President Arif Alvi (fourth from left) watch Pakistan’s fighter jets perform during a parade in Islamabad on March 23. Ghulam Rasool/AFP via Getty Images
Khan is “critical of the United States to a point that makes the military uncomfortable,” said Shamila Chaudhary, an expert at the New America think tank. “The way he’s talking about the United States is preventing the US relationship with Pakistan from being repaired, and it needs to be repaired.”
At the time, Biden's focus on Asia was in a major power struggle with China and two national security issues (the withdrawal of Afghanistan and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia). The reckless withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan has further severed ties between Washington and Islamabad, according to Chaudhary, and has angered the Pakistani government.
Robin Raphel, a former ambassador to South Asia at the State Department from 1993 to 1997, described Biden's view of Pakistan as a "non-partisan approach."
"I'm an ambassador, too, and I believe you get more honey than vinegar," he said. "It would have been great if the president had taken five minutes to drive Imran Khan."
The US sent its top official to the Ministry of Human Rights, Uzra Zeya, at a summit of the Islamic State in Pakistan last month. Zeya has also met with the country's foreign minister and senior officials, as the two countries celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations.
But there has never been anything more about the positive message of US-Pakistan relations due to the recent political and constitutional crisis in the country. Price's latest comment on the situation was brief: "We support the Pakistani constitutional process and the rule of law."
What happened next
Once Parliament completes its no-confidence vote, which could happen today, it will dissolve the government. The country's electoral commission will then look into the incumbent government led by the main opposition leader, Shehbaz Sharif. (Sharif is the brother of Nakaz Sharif, a former prime minister himself, who is currently living in exile in the UK as he faces allegations of corruption.) Also, in that upcoming vote, Khan will likely lose.
But even the details of that election are contradictory. Khan had asked the electoral commission to set a date for the next 90 days; Opposition politicians have told the NPR that changes are needed before the next election, otherwise the military will "strengthen" the next election.
In the long run, things are not so clear-cut. Among the leaders of civil society organizations in Pakistan, there is an agreement that the decision of the high court is in line with the constitution. But it could also be a vehicle for expanding the judicial capacity for political intervention.
Kuresh, a specialist in Pakistani courts and how they have become political mediators in the country, says big issues will not be fully understood until the court issues a full text of its decision in the next month or so. That detailed order may set some legal precedents and lead to serious opposition.
After the immediate excitement of keeping Khan's unconstitutional strategy, that decision could mean a lot to the court's perception, especially its role in directing parliament and the prime minister.
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