NEW DELHI: Not for the first time in its modern history, Pakistan’s judiciary – tacitly backed by the rest of its “establishment” – appears to be seeking to snuff out the career of a leading politician.
Late last week, former Prime Minister Imran Khan was convicted of misappropriating official gifts. He has been sentenced to three years in prison and cannot stand for election for five years.
Khan claims, not without reason, that the slew of legal proceedings against him are intended to keep him from contesting the next general elections, expected this fall. Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, has won a streak of by-elections since being forced out of power last year and had a good chance of returning to power.
That prospect is anathema to Pakistan’s establishment, in which the military plays a dominant role. After first embracing Khan’s insurgent, Islamist, anti-US rhetoric, the generals have more recently recoiled against his increasingly direct, populist attacks.
Past Pakistani leaders, including Khan’s predecessor Nawaz Sharif, have been disqualified on equally flimsy grounds.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN KHAN AND TRUMP
In many ways, though, Khan’s hold over his followers is unique – closer to that wielded by a figure such as former US president Donald Trump, himself caught up in an expanding legal morass. Neither man’s opponents should celebrate too soon.
On the one hand, it is true that the populist movements led by figures such as Khan and Trump are highly dependent on their personalities.
Khan’s decades in the public eye as the charismatic captain of the national cricket team mean that his followers see him not as a “regular” politician but as a successful celebrity outsider capable of transforming the country.