DC Edit | End of road for Imran’s PTI?
Shehbaz Sharif's government announces intention to ban Imran Khan's PTI for anti-state activities, treason charges follow
By : DC Comment
Update: 2024-07-16 18:30 GMT
It is not often that the Pakistan government puts out an announcement on what it intends to do with political opponents as its functionaries were more accustomed to going ahead and doing things like putting Imran Khan Niazi in jail under various charges and leaving him there.
It was a bit of a surprise then that the Pakistan Democratic Alliance government of Shehbaz Sharif, through its information minister, made public its intention of banning Imran’s Pakistan Tehreef-e-Insaf for anti-state activities and of proceeding against him and two senior colleagues for treason.
The treatment of Imran Khan, once a poster boy of the Pakistan Army but who fell out of favour with the top brass after attempting to tinker with senior appointments and ran afoul of the then chief Qamar Bajwa, has been another extreme case of how Pakistan deals with inconvenient political opponents.
Imran was overthrown as Prime Minister in April 2022 in a staged confidence vote under the Army’s prompting and locked up under a plethora of charges, the most serious ones having to do with egging his followers on to protest, even riot, after he was made ineligible to stand in the national elections.
Imran, a populist who dubbed his opponents slaves of the West, has such support among the public that they feared he would return with a landslide majority and become PM again. And yet this is a strange case of muted international support as he posed to be a liberal tending to the left, but fiercely anti-United States in word and deed.
Imran has, however, been a loner on the world scene, shunned by the likes of US President Joe Biden who refused to speak to him when he was Pakistan’s PM. Powerful forces in the Muslim world may have supported him as PM of his country, but they, too, are muted now.
The condition in which he has been incarcerated is pitiable and unbecoming even in a so-called democracy like Pakistan. But then it is a country which executed a former Prime Minister in Zulfiqar Bhutto when it was under martial law.
An existential threat to Imran’s party PTI comes at a time when there was relief from the courts that granted proportional rights to reserved seats, which may, however, lead to posing a challenge in numbers to the coalition government that boasts of a two-thirds majority.
Let it be said that the future is bleak for the former national cricket captain and Prime Minister, and the world does not seem to care.
It was a bit of a surprise then that the Pakistan Democratic Alliance government of Shehbaz Sharif, through its information minister, made public its intention of banning Imran’s Pakistan Tehreef-e-Insaf for anti-state activities and of proceeding against him and two senior colleagues for treason.
The treatment of Imran Khan, once a poster boy of the Pakistan Army but who fell out of favour with the top brass after attempting to tinker with senior appointments and ran afoul of the then chief Qamar Bajwa, has been another extreme case of how Pakistan deals with inconvenient political opponents.
Imran was overthrown as Prime Minister in April 2022 in a staged confidence vote under the Army’s prompting and locked up under a plethora of charges, the most serious ones having to do with egging his followers on to protest, even riot, after he was made ineligible to stand in the national elections.
Imran, a populist who dubbed his opponents slaves of the West, has such support among the public that they feared he would return with a landslide majority and become PM again. And yet this is a strange case of muted international support as he posed to be a liberal tending to the left, but fiercely anti-United States in word and deed.
Imran has, however, been a loner on the world scene, shunned by the likes of US President Joe Biden who refused to speak to him when he was Pakistan’s PM. Powerful forces in the Muslim world may have supported him as PM of his country, but they, too, are muted now.
The condition in which he has been incarcerated is pitiable and unbecoming even in a so-called democracy like Pakistan. But then it is a country which executed a former Prime Minister in Zulfiqar Bhutto when it was under martial law.
An existential threat to Imran’s party PTI comes at a time when there was relief from the courts that granted proportional rights to reserved seats, which may, however, lead to posing a challenge in numbers to the coalition government that boasts of a two-thirds majority.
Let it be said that the future is bleak for the former national cricket captain and Prime Minister, and the world does not seem to care.