The Economist June 4th 2 022 45
AsiaPakistani politicsInterfering Imran
O
nce or twicea year, the approaches to
Islamabad, Pakistan’s staid, leafy capi-
tal, start to resemble a jumbled cargo port.
Piles of shipping containers sprout up at
motorway junctions on the outskirts of the
city and at strategic crossroads inside it.
Lines of riot police stand guard. Residents
grumble, knowing traffic will get choked,
schools will close and getting to work will
take twice as long.
The appearance of the barriers, put
there by police, signals that the city of 1m is
under siege from one of the country’s “long
marches”. These are more aptly described
as long drives: convoys of protesters travel
in cars and minibuses from cities such as
Lahore and Peshawar, a few hours away by
road. These ritualised displays of street
power, in which political parties rally their
supporters and lead them towards the cap-
ital, are a favourite tactic for anyone trying
to rattle the government.
No one is keener on them than Imran
Khan (pictured, centre), the cricketer-
turned-populist who leads his own Paki-
stan Tehreek-e-Insaf (pti) party. Since be-
ing ousted from his job as prime ministerin a no-confidence vote in April, he has re-
fused to leave the pitch. Instead he has tak-
en to street protests, threatening to bring
down the new government.
He blames his inauspicious exit on a
conspiracy between the opposition and
America, which he claims was keen to see
the back of him because he refused to pan-
der to America’s foreign-policy demands.
America says this is nonsense. Mr Khan’s
supporters have lapped it up anyway. Over
the past few weeks, huge crowds have ral-
lied to him, demanding new elections to
kick out the “imported” government. They
have also criticised the armed forces,
whose support is essential for any govern-ment, in unusually explicit terms.
Mr Khan’s latest hurrah came on May
25th, when he urged supporters to march
on the capital and stage a sit-in until new
elections are held. But turnout was unim-
pressive. In the end, he scrapped the plan
as the protesters reached central Islam-
abad and skirmished with security forces,
who fired tear gas. He announced a fresh
deadline of May 31st for elections to be
called and warned of more marches if the
government does not comply.
There has been much speculation about
why the march was dispersed. Mr Khan
says he wanted to prevent bloodshed. His
opponents say he was disappointed with
the size of the turnout. ptiinsiders claim
that the march was halted after the gener-
als gave assurances that elections, at pre-
sent scheduled for late 2023 when the cur-
rent parliament’s term ends, would be
brought forward to this year.
Mr Khan’s latest deadline came and
went. He had not called a new march by the
time The Economistwent to press. Some ob-
servers suspect that he may need time to
rally his supporters after the anticlimactic
ending to his last push on the capital. His
allies think he is unlikely to return to Is-
lamabad imminently.
It is hard to see why the new prime min-
ister, Shehbaz Sharif, a former chief minis-
ter of Punjab and the younger brother of
Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister,
would agree to call early elections. His gov-
ernment, less than two months old, has
taken tentative steps towards repairing re-DELHI
The ousted prime minister is jeopardising his successor’s attempts
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