A major political crisis has been raging in Pakistan for weeks, which culminated in the past few days with the presentation of a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Imran Khan. Last weekend, Khan attempted to dissolve parliament and call new elections, which Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled illegal on Thursday. The partyaligned vicepresident of parliament had also blocked the vote on the motion of no confidence, a decision the opposition had called “unconstitutional”. However, court intervention forced Parliament to reconvene today, Saturday 9 April, to schedule the vote on the motion of no confidence.
The current crisis is closely linked to the figure of the prime minister: both to his failure at the political level (or perceived as such) and to the loss of support from the Pakistani army, which is very powerful and also very influential in the country’s political life .
Imran Khan, a former Oxford cricket champion, has been Prime Minister of Pakistan since 2018: he was elected with Pakistan’s nationalist and populist Justice Movement after, among other things, pledges to fight corruption and poverty and boost the economy, already the Fall was then in big trouble.
During his tenure, things did not turn out as he had hoped: the economy remained in deep trouble, inflation rates were among the highest in Southeast Asia, unemployment, which initially fell, rose, and Khan appears to have achieved no good results either in the fight against corruption. Therefore, she has gradually lost political support: there have been protests and her popularity has plummeted.
To make matters worse, the loss of army support seems to have added to this, which according to various analyzes is responsible for Khan’s election in 2018.
In Pakistan, a country that has seen various coups and military governments, the army has a very strong political influence, especially when it comes to security and foreign policy. His support is essential to the government in a country where, by the way, no prime minister has ever managed to reach the natural end of his or her term.
With the army, Imran Khan had various types of clashes, some related to Pakistan’s progressive distance from the United States (albeit with many ambiguities and ambiguities) and to its rapprochement with China. The Pakistani military has very close ties with the Americans, with whom it may wish to continue working, according to Foreign Policy’s Michael Kugelman, to combat Islamic extremism in the region (which the Taliban victory in neighboring Afghanistan helped fuel). Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has made it clear, even in the midst of this crisis, that he has no intention of damaging his ties with the United States.
Khan’s lack of consensus had prompted some MPs from his own party to support the motion of no confidence tabled in Parliament and then blocked.
Khan had responded by saying he was “the victim of an American conspiracy,” referring specifically to a private exchange between an American government official and Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan: the American Officials would have expressed dissatisfaction with Pakistan’s first minister, saying that relations between the United States and Pakistan would have improved if Khan had been ousted by a vote of no confidence.
On this basis, Parliament Vice President Qasim Suri, of the same party as Khan, had blocked the vote: Suri had cited “foreign interference” in the country’s internal politics and said the vote was unconstitutional because it violated Article 5 of the constitution Pakistani, the one who says that loyalty to the state is a duty of every citizen. Shortly thereafter, Khan had asked Pakistani President Arif Alvi to dissolve parliament and call snap elections, which the president had done. The Supreme Court then reversed those decisions.
That’s why today the Pakistani parliament is voting on the government’s trust, which Khan is trying to avoid by any means possible. No confidence requires at least 172 votes out of a total of 342: it is likely that they will be achieved, also because Khan’s party has lost the majority in parliament. In that case, the opposition can appoint a new prime minister likely Shehbaz Sharif, the opposition leader to rule until the next elections scheduled for August 2023.