Losing the grip like Imran Khan

In Pakistan, Imran Khan's rise to power in 2018 was like fairy tales. He had all the stories needed to frame himself as a true champion for people's cause.

He captained Pakistan in its only cricket world cup victory, he left behind a life of ease, comfort and opulence to join politics, and after 22 years in politics as an underdog, he proved himself by defeating the Sharifs and the Bhuttos. His supporters were optimistic that Khan would turn the country into a Switzerland.

But in less than four years since he took office, Imran Khan – in the face of a united opposition's no-trust move at the National Assembly for "economic mismanagement" – advised the president on Sunday to dissolve assemblies. With assemblies dissolved, fresh elections will be held in Pakistan within 90 days as Khan asks supporters to "prepare for elections".

As his party members have been saying prior to the no-trust motion that the PM would play till the last ball, he did play the final shot to save himself from getting ousted by the opposition at the last moment. But Khan lost his power anyway. His deputy speaker dismissed the no-trust motion that analysts like Tariq Azeem Khan believes to be unconstitutional. And doing so, he has led the country to a constitutional crisis.

So, what went so wrong for Khan, a politician who was speculated to be on good terms with Pakistan's all mighty military? Among other things, as of now, it seems to have a lot to do with his stance on the Ukraine war that didn't quite match with the military's. Days after Khan's refusal to denounce Russia and do the West's bidding on the Ukraine crisis, Pak military chief Gen Qamar Bajwa said on Saturday that Russian invasion of Ukraine must be stopped immediately.

Imran Khan has been vocal about the United States' conspiracy to oust him since he showed the so-called "letter of conspiracy" to the media. But is that all? What united all the opposition parties of the National Assembly including Imran allies and his own party men against Khan in the first place?

A politician who got only 911 votes from Karachi South in 1997 swept to victory with over 545,000 votes from five different constituencies in 2018. A triumphant Imran said, "Today I have been given a chance to fulfil what I dreamed for this country…We will run Pakistan like it has never been run before."

But the positive energy expired soon as the PTI government didn't get along with the opposition, instead they started to squabble on issues such as opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif's nomination as the chair of the Public Accounts Committee to begin with. The prime minister was not at all interested in consulting with the opposition on any business. Rather a sense brawl was set in the agenda from the start.

Khan, even as prime minister, was more into building his brand as an angry populist who is ready to "bust the mafias" who happen to be the opposition leaders sitting in sneezing distance in parliament. His brand of calling out opposition leaders as Three Stooges, or Diesel for an example, largely matched the former US President Trump who called out his opposition names such as Crooked Hillary.

And under the Khan regime, most of the opposition leaders were continuously in and out of prison that eventually led them to stand united against the ruling PTI.

Now add this with the so-called "khud-ehtesabi" agenda of imprisoning several of his own ministers on various charges. It jeopardised the loyalty of his own party men so much that it eventually resulted in two dozen PTI MPs joining the opposition in a no-trust move to oust their own leader.

Imran Khan said, "The people that looted this country, that put it in debt, I make this vow today, I make it before God, that I won't spare a single one of them." He looked all too serious about not "sparing any of them".

He tried to sell his persona as a lone fighter for Pakistan's cause while everyone else were selling the country's interest – the latest example would be his allegation of the opposition falling for a foreign (US) conspiracy trap to oust him.

Besides, the economic crisis including the inflation and Covid-led calamities has really been hurting Khan's agenda of building Pakistan into the model of Nordic welfare states. The opposition's allegation of economic mismanagement could be an exaggeration but Khan wouldn't find many to laud his government's handling of the economy.

The World Bank says inflation hit about 10% in Pakistan last year. The price of cooking oil is up 130% since he took office while fuel cost has risen to 45%. It is true that Imran Khan inherited a mess and the pandemic didn't help, but his policies were also not in place to salvage the crisis too. The PTI felt these impacts in the last provincial elections in strongholds like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa already.

And last but not the least, Khan's fallout with the military in the event of Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum's appointment as the spy chief also came into play. The Imran-Bajwa bromance at the beginning of his tenure drew flak from critics to label the 2018 election as "sham".

But at the dusk of his tenure, Imran has lost the trust of the military too.

The United States could have a role to play in the PTI government's departure as the Pakistani PM alleges. But Imran Khan himself cannot escape the mess of his creation, and his regime's failure to build bridges instead created distance among the allies and sympathetic other political parties.

Khan may have saved his face with a last minute googly by dissolving parliament, but he seems to have jeopardised all the cards necessary to come back stronger as he has promised his supporters. And in doing so, he led Pakistan to uncertain territories that could lure the old guard back to the centre of power.