Analysis | Can Pakistan pick up the pieces?

A divided Supreme Court and a political class split down the middle are only toppings for a country that appears to be in a permanently failing state as ordinary Pakistanis deal with runaway inflation, a depreciating rupee, and growth plummeting to 0.4%.    

A divided Supreme Court and a political class split down the middle are only toppings for a country that appears to be in a permanently failing state as ordinary Pakistanis deal with runaway inflation, a depreciating rupee, and growth plummeting to 0.4%.    

The inability of the Election Commission of Pakistan, the country’s Supreme Court and the executive government to agree on a date to hold elections in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa are a sign that all institutions are in a race to the bottom.

Punjab, if the writ of a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court runs, will go to the polls on May 14 but Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his government are loathing to release funds for the elections and provide security in an embattled country. 

If we look at the past as practice, the “stallions of Rawalpindi”, to borrow a phrase from the Pakistani columnist, Ayaz Amir, would have been at the gates of Islamabad a long time ago. A few jeeps of the 111 Brigade, the favoured troops for coups, would have been stationed outside key locations in Islamabad (as happened last in 1999) and it would be curtains for a civilian government. 

But the economic and political crises run so deep that Army Chief Asim Munir appears reluctant to take power unlike one of his predecessors, Pervez Musharraf, whose October 1999 coup created barely a ripple in Pakistan’s polity. 

As Pakistan awaits financial bailout, a habit it has been unable to kick, time could be running out for an elite so used to living it up as ordinary folks toil to make ends meet. Without a fundamental restructuring of the country’s economy, a bailout would serve only to bring temporary respite to the elite. 

On the political front, the man challenging the established order in Pakistan is none other than Imran Khan, who was a darling of the  faujis, until things soured between him and the former Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa in 2022. Mr. Khan appears to have support from a section of the Supreme Court, whose actions have ensured the interests of the former Prime Minister.