Where does Pakistan find itself year after Imran Khan lost power?
Al JazeeraThe ex-PM’s message of resistance and victimhood not only has caught people’s imaginations but also revealed deep schisms in state institutions. Islamabad, Pakistan – Minutes after the clock struck midnight on April 10 last year, Imran Khan became the first prime minister in Pakistan’s history to lose a confidence vote in parliament. When Khan became prime minister in 2018, his critics claimed he was propped up by the military, which has directly ruled Pakistan for more than three decades and “constantly meddled” in the country’s politics, according to the former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. “Traditionally, the people that were in favour of military intervention in politics are now questioning it because they shifted their support to Imran Khan, and that perhaps is one of the reasons the military seems to be weak.” Kamran Bokhari, a senior director at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington, DC, said that while the Pakistani military still commands significant control over Pakistan’s politics, it is also under tremendous pressure. Khan a ‘populist’ However, Lahore-based political analyst and former editor Muhammad Badar Alam calls the former prime minister a “populist”, saying he has offered only “simplistic solutions to complex problems”.