In April 2022, after Imran Khan lost a parliamentary vote of no confidence, Dr. Nadeem Malik, Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, in an elaborate analysis suggested that the collapse of another hybrid government might open a narrow path towards stronger civilian rule. 

The condition was clear: political parties had to organise their members, practise democracy and confront corruption. More than four years on, that opportunity has largely been squandered. The continuing confrontation over Imran Khan is one consequence of the parties’ own failure to build a political order able to settle disagreements through law, elections and negotiation.

A September Financial Times report described the preparations for another protest in Islamabad and the extraordinary persistence of Imran Khan’s following despite his imprisonment. Its account captures the immediate struggle. The pivotal question is why the parties that replaced him have not offered a convincing democratic answer to his popularity. Containers can close a road; they cannot repair a broken relationship between voters and their representatives.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) once knew the cost of subordinating politics to arrangements made outside parliament. They endured disqualification, exile, prosecution and curtailed terms. Their Charter of Democracy in 2006 recognised that parties must stop seeking advantage through the other’s exclusion. When Imran Khan was removed through the constitutional procedure On April 10, 2022, these parties could have renewed that compact and extended it to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). 

The Charter was an undertaking between parties that had learned what happens when an opponent is denied a fair contest. It promised oversight and provincial autonomy. A party cannot demand constitutional restraint while in opposition and regard it as a nuisance once it sits on the treasury benches. The 2022 transition offered PML-N and PPP a chance to govern without inheriting the methods they had once protested. 

Instead, the political contest became a struggle to decide whose turn it was to be kept out. That history does not absolve Imran Khan. His alliance government also treated opponents as enemies and mistook the backing of powerful institutions for durable political consent. 

PTI promised to break with the old system but recruited many of its familiar figures and concentrated authority around one leader. Its present demand for fair process is legitimate; the democratic principle behind that demand must also govern how........

© The Friday Times