Has Pakistan’s new coalition government been handed a poisoned chalice
Politics will likely consume much of Pakistan’s time and attention in 2023, as it did in 2022. The country’s turn to political instability last spring did not end with a dramatic no-confidence vote in parliament last April that ousted then Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan from office.
Instability and polarization have only heightened since then: Khan has led a popular opposition movement against the incumbent coalition government and the military, staging a series of large rallies across the country through the year.After days of intense political bargaining following one of the most contested elections in Pakistan’s history, agreement was reached this week on a five-party minority coalition government led by former interim prime minister, Shahbaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
The protracted negotiations between the centre-right PML-N and the centre-left Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were complicated by a split mandate that failed – against all expectations – to produce a clear winning majority for the PML-N. Its credibility, and by extension the standing of the coalition, has been strongly challenged by former prime minister Imran Khan, leader of the Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), which denounced the coalition as ‘mandate thieves’.
The struggle for power in Pakistan continues into 2023. While the incumbent government has not ceded to Khan’s demand for early elections, country-wide elections are constitutionally mandated to be held by October this year. It benefits the government politically to hold them off as long as it possibly can as it tries to dig itself out of Pakistan’s urgent economic crisis and its lackluster domestic performance (its diplomatic foreign policy approach has fared better, but that may not matter for elections).
The last year has cost it precious political capital, and Khan’s party did very well in a set of by-elections held in July and October. The state has tried to mire Khan and his party in legal cases, relying on a familiar playbook used against opposition politicians in Pakistan, albeit to limited effect, with the courts’ involvement.
Khan’s group of independent candidates won the largest number of seats (92), far ahead of the PML-N, which came second with 75 seats, and the PPP which came third with 54 seats. Khan, who is currently in jail serving extended prison sentences, has since claimed that his candidates were deprived of an absolute majority through widespread electoral fraud.
For politics-obsessed Pakistan, the biggest question remains who will win the next general election. Will former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (brother of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif) return to Pakistan to run as the head of his party, the PML-N? Can Imran Khan win on the strength of his popular support, despite his confrontation with the military? Regardless of the outcome, we can say this much given the histories of the main contenders: The direction of the country is unlikely to change.