Inflection point’: US hearing on Pakistan shines light on complex ties
By Saqib Saleem Qureshi
Newyork : The US Congress will hold a hearing next week on the “future of democracy” in Pakistan and the state of relations between the two countries, weeks after a controversial election in Pakistan that the country’s biggest opposition party alleges was manipulated.
But foreign policy analysts said that the March 20 hearing of the subcommittee of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs is unlikely to affect the direction of ties between the nations that have been rocky, though they have improved in the past two years.
The hearing follows a letter that was endorsed by 31 Congress members, who wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on February 29, urging them to not recognise the new Pakistani government and push for an investigation into alleged manipulation in elections.
Pakistan conducted its general polls last month, which were marred by widespread allegations of fraud, unusually delayed results and numerous other irregularities.
The biggest winners in the polls were Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) backed candidates, who won 93 seats, despite being denied the use of their electoral symbol, a cricket bat, days before the polls. The party’s leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan, has been in prison since August 2023, and was convicted on multiple charges just before the elections. Numerous other party-backed candidates were unable to conduct election canvassing due to a crackdown by the authorities.
Despite winning the greatest number of seats, the PTI refused to form a coalition with either the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) or Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which won 75 and 54 seats respectively.
Subsequently, the PMLN and the PPP joined hands to form an alliance along with smaller parties to create the government, a near-repeat of a coalition they forged in April 2022, when the PTI and then-Prime Minister Imran Khan were removed from power through a parliamentary vote of no confidence.
Khan, who had been in power since August 2018, has repeatedly accused that his overthrow was engineered through a US-led conspiracy, in collusion with Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. Both the US and the Pakistani military have repeatedly rejected the allegations, describing them as false
