Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ishaq Dar, has walked back an announcement by the country’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar about the government’s plans to ban the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan. But the idea of banning Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been delayed, not abandoned. An outright ban would be no more effective in denting Khan’s popularity than other high-handed measures so far. It will also add to Pakistan’s political instability at a time when the government’s priority should be restoring economic health and pursuing durable peace with its neighbours.
Pakistan’s constitution allows proscription of a “political party [that] has been formed or is operating in a manner prejudicial to the sovereignty or integrity of Pakistan”. The country’s military-led establishment has been instrumental in banning other parties in the past, most notably the National Awami Party (NAP), led by Pashtun nationalist Abdul Wali Khan, son of Indian freedom fighter Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
NAP was banned twice, once under Martial Law in 1970 and then again in 1975 under civilian rule. The second time, the Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the ban, citing the party’s opposition to the ideology of Pakistan and its championing of Pashtun and Baloch rights. Party members reorganised first as the National Democratic Party and later as the Awami National Party (ANP). The ANP still exists and has led or been part of several governments in the northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province since the 1990s.
If the ban on NAP, a party despised by Pakistan’s establishment for its secular, pro-India stance proved difficult to sustain, it is unlikely that it would work against the populist PTI. Imran Khan is the civilian face of the Pakistani establishment’s traditional worldview. He espouses a particular mix of Pan-Islamism, Muslim exceptionalism, and anti-India Pakistani nationalism that can be identified with military rulers such as General Ayub Khan and General Pervez Musharraf.
After his ouster in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022, Khan doubled down on his populism, adding generals to the list of villains from whom he would save Pakistan. That has created a powerful narrative of victimhood, blaming Pakistan’s elites and foreign conspiracies for the country’s problems. Like other populists, Khan does not offer realistic solutions to serious problems. But he gives an opportunity for powerless people to vent their rage and frustration.
Imran Khan’s popularity represents the dominance of the establishment’s ideology over Pakistani thinking even when the military’s current leadership wants to break from it. His rise to power in 2018 may have been orchestrated by the military but now his support base is very real. PTI supporters are angry with the military for breaking up with Khan and turning to the politicians that the military and PTI had together described as corrupt.
The uneasy alliance between the military leadership and the allegedly corrupt politicians faces challenges from within the establishment as well. Not all military officers and judges, and their family members, are willing to turn their backs on Khan and embrace politicians whom they have been brought up to hate. That makes it difficult to marginalise PTI and Khan through constitutional and legal manoeuvres, which were effective against other politicians in the past.
In Pakistan’s February 8 general elections, PTI-affiliated candidates won more seats than any other party. The election is widely believed to have been rigged and PTI overcame huge odds, including the imprisonment of Imran Khan and hundreds of his supporters, and denial of an election symbol that forced PTI candidates to run as independents.
Efforts to deny PTI additional seats in parliament, reserved for women and religious minorities, were recently foiled by the country’s Supreme Court. A reliable establishment ally in the past, the superior judiciary currently appears to be swayed by public opinion. If PTI is banned, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court would uphold the ban.
Pakistanis interested in politics seem to be fed up with hybrid regimes maintaining the trappings of democracy while being run from behind the scenes by military intelligence officers. But there is little consensus among politicians on how to revive the country’s stagnant economy, running on borrowed money for years.
Moreover, none of Pakistan political parties know what to do with the terrorists, nurtured as proxies against India and Afghanistan, who have become a threat to Pakistan’s internal security.
There is little fresh thinking about foreign policy either, beyond PTI’s populist nationalist rhetoric and the ruling coalition’s cautious formal engagement with other countries. While politicians squabble and quarrel, pursuing personal conflicts and extreme narratives, the military still retains the ability to craft plans, however flawed, to run the country.
A ban on PTI would hurtle Pakistan further down the road of absolute authoritarianism. A direct military takeover would not be far, although, in the current environment of negativity towards the army leadership, it might not be easy for the military to rule without civilian cover.
To avoid bringing the country to that crossroads, Pakistan’s politicians (including Khan) need to take a path they have never taken before by cooperating with one another instead of confrontation and polarisation. But will it happen soon enough to avoid the disaster that awaits Pakistani democracy?