By Sampath Perera
22 August 2018
The right-wing, Islamic populist
Imran Khan was sworn-in as Pakistan’s prime minister last Saturday, amid
protests from opposition parties that Pakistan’s “deep state” had muzzled them
during the campaign for last month’s national and provincial assembly elections
and rigged the results.
A onetime cricket star whose
Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf (or Movement for Justice) was long an also-ran in
Pakistani politics, Khan is assuming the reins of government of a country whose
economy is teetering on the verge of collapse. Moreover, Islamabad’s relations
with the United States, for decades its most important ally, have become so
estranged that Washington is threatening to nix an emergency loan from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Khan devoted much of his first
televised address as prime minister to blaming the parties that respectively
led the country’s last two governments and have dominated its politics for the
last three decades—the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan
People’s Party (PPP)—for the economic crisis. “Never in Pakistan’s history have
we faced such difficult economic circumstances,” said Khan. “In our entire
history,” he continued, “we haven’t been as indebted” as “we have become in the
last ten years.”
Khan, who has vowed to slash
expenditures across the board, announced the formation of a committee to mount
a nationwide drive to “cut expenses.” In an attempt to lend legitimacy to an
austerity and privatization drive that will further impoverish Pakistan’s
workers and toilers, Khan pledged to fight corruption, increase tax collections
from the rich, and eschew the perks of office, including by reducing the prime
minister’s personal staff from over five hundred to just two.
In the July 25 election,
Khan’s PTI captured 151 of the 342 National Assembly seats. Its parliamentary
majority is dependent on the support of smaller parties, including the
Karachi-based MQM-P and the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, and
independents.
In last Friday’s National
Assembly election for prime minister, Khan polled 176 votes as against 96 for
Shehbaz Sharif—the current PML (N) president and brother of the former prime
minister, Nawaz Sharif. The latter was stripped by the Supreme Court of the
prime ministership in July 2017, after being found guilty of corruption
charges, and was jailed in the run-up to this year’s election in what was
widely perceived as a politically-motivated and manipulated prosecution.
The PPP had initially
indicated that it would vote for Shehbaz Sharif as a show of protest against
the military, judiciary and bureaucracy’s machinations in favour of Khan and
his PTI. But in the end, the PPP abstained in the prime ministerial election.
A similar spectacle occurred
in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province and the traditional PML-N
stronghold. Although the PML-N had won narrowly more Punjab Assembly seats, the
PTI, using the leverage gained from its victory at the Centre, was able to
rally independents and smaller groupings, including the Pakistan Muslim
League-Quaid (PML-Q), the party set up by General Musharraf to support his
US-backed dictatorship.
For four years beginning in
June 2013, Nawaz Sharif headed a right-wing government that imposed IMF
austerity, collaborated with the US in waging war in Afghanistan, and bowed to
the military’s demands for greater powers, including the reinstitution of
military courts and the death penalty, and the expansion of “anti-terrorism”
operations to large parts of the country.
Nevertheless, Sharif and the
military crossed swords over his attempt to pursue closer relations with India,
and over whether the civilian government or military would wield supervisory
authority over the $60 billion, geo-strategically significant China Pakistan
Economic Corridor (CPEC).
That the July 25 election was
far from free or fair is incontrovertible. But it is also true that there has
been a huge erosion of popular support for both the PML-N and PPP, because of
their imposition of IMF austerity, connivance in the US occupation of
Afghanistan, and flagrant corruption.
For the time being, both Pakistan’s
ruling elite and international capital, as attested by commentary in the likes
of the Economist and Financial Times, view Khan, given his image
as a political outsider and populist appeal, as the best frontman for a
government that will be tasked with imposing socially incendiary spending cuts
and pushing through a fire-sale of state-owned enterprises.
The records of those Khan has
chosen for his cabinet underscore the incoming government’s pro-austerity
orientation and its eagerness to work hand-in-glove with the military, which
has directly ruled Pakistan for almost half of its seven decades as an
independent state and continues to effectively control its foreign and security
policies.
Twelve of the 21 top
appointees—16 minister and 5 advisers—served in Musharraf’s dictatorial regime
and five were ministers in former PPP governments.
Khan’s appointments to the
Finance and Foreign Affairs portfolios exemplify the unbroken link between the
PTI and the anti-working class and pro-imperialist policies of its
predecessors.
Finance Minister Asad Umar was
until recently reputedly Pakistan’s highest paid CEO. In recent weeks, he has
been boasting of an IMF-backed plan to swiftly reorganize the management and
corporate structure of 200 public sector enterprises, so as to ensure they make
profits and can be rapidly sold off to investors.
As his foreign minister, Khan
has named Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who served in the same capacity in the PPP-led
government from 2008 to 2013. Qureshi is known to be well liked in Washington.
During his previous tenure as foreign minister, the Obama administration
dramatically escalated the illegal US drone war in Pakistan’s the tribal areas
with the tacit support of the Pakistan government and military, killing
thousands of innocent men, women and children.
Khan first gained significant
popular support by demanding an end to drone war and denouncing the PPP
government’s relations with Washington as “slavery.” However, he has long
scaled back such rhetoric. Under conditions where the Trump administration has
threatened to punish Pakistan, including by stripping it of its status as a
“Major non-NATO ally,” if it does not more slavishly implement the US Afghan
war strategy, he has limited himself to calls for a more equitable relationship
between Islamabad and Washington.
Khan’s appointment of Qureshi
is clearly meant to signal that his government is anxious to mend fences with
Washington.
Khan’s vapid promises of an
“Islamic welfare state” will quickly prove to be a cruel hoax.
A self-avowed rightist, who
promotes himself as a “born-again Muslim” promoting “Islamic values,” Khan has
long cultivated close ties with the military and the religious right, including
through his support for the country’s draconian “blasphemy laws” and the state
persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim minority.
The author also recommends:
US threatens
to nix IMF bailout of Pakistan
[10 August 2018]
[10 August 2018]
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