The script seems eerily familiar. Imran Khan, once the golden boy of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, found himself at the receiving end of not one, but two, damning court verdicts this week.
Sentenced to 10 years in jail on Tuesday, and 14 years on Wednesday, the brazen timing of the convictions in two separate cases made one thing abundantly clear: the military will stop at nothing to keep Khan away from Pakistan’s general election, which will be held next week.
It was not so long ago that Khan himself benefited from these age-old tactics utilised repeatedly in Pakistan’s chequered political history. In 2018, when Khan was running for prime minister, it was the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif who had fallen out of grace with the military and found himself facing charges of corruption and being barred from office. Less than two weeks before the election in July 2018, Sharif was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Now the tables have turned again. Khan has become the military’s harshest critic, confined behind bars, while a cowed Sharif has reconciled with the army generals and his path back to power has been cleared. As allegations of pre-poll rigging have abounded, Sharif is expected to be all but escorted into an election win.
Khan was already banned from running in the election, but the back-to-back convictions and hefty prison sentences speak to the strength of the military’s campaign against its former protege.
Since he was toppled from power in April 2022 – after a vote of no confidence widely acknowledged to have been orchestrated by the military – Khan’s criticisms of the army establishment and its tight control over Pakistani politics has been unprecedented.
Yet his campaign against the military was always doomed to fail given its iron grip, and since August, when Khan was finally arrested, it was made clear that the military would stop at nothing to sideline Khan and destroy his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
Any pretence of due judicial process being followed was abandoned entirely at both cases where Khan was sentenced this week. Instead of an open courtroom, the trials were conducted inside the jail where Khan is being detained and his lawyers were not allowed to choose or cross-examine any witnesses.
Given the hefty crackdown on PTI in recent months, including all rallies being shut down by police and all coverage of the party largely banned from news channels, the party is a shadow of its former self, even if it still commands huge support from voters.
For many observers, Khan’s double convictions only serve to confirm that the elections are likely to be among the least credible in Pakistan’s recent history, pushing the country several steps back on its turbulent path towards democracy.
It is reflected too in the unusually muted political campaigning period. As the military has proved to be unafraid to show its hand in “managing” the election, even as it claims to be apolitical, all semblance of a fair fight has dissipated, with parties barely even putting forward a manifesto.
Among Pakistan’s voters, many of whom still revere Khan, there is a sense of anger and apathy. Yet most will echo the same refrain; in Pakistani politics, nothing ever really changes.
