This time, though, the Sharifs’ party didn’t win the general election. The victory went to a collection of candidates aligned with the cricket hero Imran Khan, who’d been prime minister from 2018 until his ouster in 2022—and who’s been in prison, on the military’s command, since last May. After falling out with its leadership, Khan was barred from running for office, and members of his party were forced to run as independents. And yet, despite getting almost no coverage in Pakistan’s mainstream media, they won the most votes overall.

Now what?

Atika Rehman is the London correspondent and former managing editor of Dawn, the largest English-language newspaper in Pakistan. With Khan by far the most popular politician in the country, Rehman says, and with his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, unusually adept at keeping his supporters informed and engaged, the stunning success of the PTI’s candidates brings a serious new challenge to the vast influence the armed forces have held in Pakistan’s political life for generations.

Pakistanis had long accepted the military’s established authority over their country’s elected government. But Khan’s removal from office and subsequent conviction on dubious charges have driven a surge of citizens to their first open rejection of that authority. Which, Rahman says, seems to be taking the country into an era of new instability, as public support remains high for Khan—and scarce for the military-installed coalition now governing in his place.

The candidates he backed had to run as independents—and more importantly, they were banned from using the PTI electoral symbol, which is a cricket bat. Now, in Pakistan, about 40 percent of people are illiterate, so every party uses a symbol so illiterate voters can recognize their preferred candidates. But Khan’s cricket bat was forbidden. It was a major complication.

I was in Pakistan to cover the last 10 days of the campaign, and in small towns all over central Punjab Province, I was blown away by the support for Imran Khan. Bear in mind, this was during the peak of the crackdown against his party. The police immediately shut down campaign rallies, or even a speech on a street corner, if they thought the candidate was linked to Khan. I ended up not meeting even one of Khan’s candidates, as they were too scared to come out and identify themselves with him.

But in every neighborhood and every shop I visited, people of all ages knew who their local Khan-backed candidate was—and what their electoral symbol was. Khan’s party used social media and other digital tools to make sure of it. They devised an application that you could enter your location into, and it would tell you the candidate’s name and symbol.

During the week before election day, Khan and his wife were given three new, consecutive prison sentences—of seven, 10, and 14 years. People came to me and said, This is the kind of stuff that makes us want to get out and vote for him. Khan’s supporters, too, were anxious about being identified with him on account of the crackdown—but they were seething.

“After nine years of ruling directly, the Pakistani military restored civilian government in 2008. But sometime before 2013, they decided the country’s two top parties—led by the Sharif and Bhutto families, respectively—had to be replaced because they’d started challenging the military. So it was looking for a Plan B—and started to push the narrative that Pakistan’s established politicians were corrupt thieves and that the country needed a clean break. To the military, Imran Khan was the perfect poster boy for a new, fresh, uncorrupted political party. He was universally recognized in Pakistan, he’d done high-profile good works, and he had an impeccable background.”

“In February, I was in Punjab, where people have tended always to be proud of the military. But this time, the sentiment was just the opposite. People were openly questioning the military. They knew the election would be fixed, and there was a lot of anger about it. To me, it feels like a shift. Of course, this isn’t the first time that the military has been criticized in Pakistan. But it is the first time since Imran Khan was removed as prime minister in April 2022 that the military has seen such serious, sustained, public castigation from a mainstream political party.”

“The success of Khan’s candidates is remarkable, considering the crackdown against their party and the appearance of election interference. And it’s making people in military headquarters uncomfortable, because they’re realizing this is a genie they can’t put back in its bottle. The current military chief did not want Imran Khan to win, and he’s going to do whatever he can to keep Khan out of power.”

Borderlands

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