Pakistan’s ousted prime minister, Imran Khan, was arrested on Tuesday in a serious escalation of a political disaster that raises the prospect of mass unrest by his steadfast supporters.
The disaster has been constructing for months as Mr. Khan has overtly challenged the Pakistan navy and the present authorities of conspiring towards him. The navy on Monday accused the previous chief of creating false accusations towards a senior intelligence official.
He was at a court docket listening to in Islamabad when he was arrested by paramilitary troops. Mr. Khan, who was faraway from workplace in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April final 12 months, is dealing with dozens of court docket circumstances on fees that embody terrorism and corruption.
The arrest immediately intensified a showdown between the present authorities and Mr. Khan, a populist former cricket star, who has staged a political comeback within the months since his elimination from workplace. His get together has drawn tens of 1000’s to political rallies throughout the nation, at which Mr. Khan and others have known as for recent elections and accused Pakistan’s highly effective navy institution of orchestrating his ouster.
He and his supporters have characterised the costs towards Mr. Khan as a misuse of the justice system by the federal government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif and by the navy to sideline him from politics. Pakistani political and navy leaders have repeatedly denied these claims.
The political tensions surrounding Mr. Khan got here to a head in November, when the previous prime minister was wounded throughout a political rally after an unidentified man opened fireplace on his convoy, in what aides have known as an assassination try. Since then, Mr. Khan has been largely ensconced at his residence in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest metropolis.
Fawad Chaudhry, a prime aide to Mr. Khan, mentioned that the menace to Mr. Khan’s life made court docket appearances a lot riskier, including: “It is not humanly possible to make court appearances in such a vast number of cases.”
The drama surrounding Mr. Khan appears solely to have buoyed his reputation, analysts say, underscoring his distinctive potential to outmaneuver Pakistan’s typical playbook for sidelining political leaders who’ve fallen out of favor with the nation’s highly effective navy.
Over the summer time, his get together, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., gained sweeping victories in native elections in Punjab — a province that has typically served as a bellwether for nationwide politics — and within the port metropolis of Karachi.
Those political victories have been additionally seen as a response to worsening financial circumstances that the brand new authorities has struggled to handle, and as a repudiation of the navy institution, which has lengthy wielded a heavy hand in Pakistani politics.
But they’ve prompted a rising crackdown on Mr. Khan and his supporters that many view as a coordinated effort by the authorities to dampen his political prospects.
Journalists recognized to be sympathetic to Mr. Khan say they’ve been harassed by the authorities. Live broadcasts of Mr. Khan’s speeches have been banned from news tv channels. A mainstream channel, ARY News, was pressured off the air after airing an interview with one in every of Mr. Khan’s prime aides through which he made anti-military remarks.
The disaster has flipped the script for Mr. Khan, who benefited from an in depth relationship with the navy when he was elected prime minister in 2018. At the time, his political rivals claimed that the authorities had waged a marketing campaign of coercion and intimidation that deterred any opposition to Mr. Khan and ensured his electoral success.
Military officers have denied these accusations and maintained that the establishment has adopted a “neutral” place within the present political disaster. The navy appeared to withdraw their help for Mr. Khan at first of final 12 months, after which lawmakers in Parliament eliminated him with the no-confidence vote.
Since then, Mr. Khan’s accusations that the navy was colluding towards him have grown more and more harsh and direct — a rarity in Pakistan’s political system, the place the navy wields an intimidating affect.
Still, Mr. Khan has retained widespread reputation — an indication that the authorities’ conventional strategies for sidelining political leaders is probably not sufficient to silence a populist politician within the period of social media, analysts say.
Now, many worry Mr. Khan’s arrest will additional escalate the political turmoil that has embroiled the nation in current months. Before Mr. Khan was detained, his aides warned that doing so would set off mass unrest that might convey Pakistan to a standstill.
Source: www.nytimes.com