New York-I appeared on a Twitter Spaces panel by The Redline Podcast‘s Francis Leach and Michael Hilliard about the current state of prime ministerial politics in flood-embattled Pakistan.I spoke alongside Michael Kugelman, Sahar Kkan, and Fereeha M Idrees.
Khan was ousted from his premiership back in April in a parliamentary no-confidence vote that severely rattled the current status quo in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Khan was charged with terrorism offences, since dropped by the high court, that have imperiled his potential return to power. He is currently railing against his successor, Shebaz Sharif, brother of now ailing former PM Nawaz, while existing in both political and legal limbo.
Khan public persona are a mix of aging, suave firebrand-sim and Pakistani nationalism that seeks to either subsume or subvert the more provincial political allegiances that have held sway over many of Pakistan’s more democratic years. As a Pathan from Punjab he can carry equal clout denouncing the drone strikes in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa while understanding nuances of the Punjabi heart of his country’s demographic core. His strident populism struck a chord with an electorate exhausted from decades of misrule and rampant cronyism from the country’s kelptocratic ruling parties. His Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was meant to scrub theft and ethnic chauvinism from the top down but he has now run afoul of those he’s run against.
The man who wanted to be the saviour of Pakistan is now being suffocated by the security establishment he once seemed the darling of. PM Sharif and his acolytes portray Khan as a rogue domestic pariah who alienated the international system the country’s ailing economy so desperately needs. It seems impossible to reconcile the narratives of Khan’s PTI with those of the PML-N and PPP. Khan political foes paint him as an agent of chaos while they will restore the old, if deeply flawed, normal.
