Pakistan Needs to Get Past 'Lock Him Up' Politics
Fierce jostling won’t end after this week’s elections. But the country cannot afford to let that hold up essential economic reforms.
On the outs.
Photographer: Betsy Joles/BloombergThis week, Pakistanis will go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. The last vote, in the summer of 2018, took place under controversial circumstances: The country’s powerful military was generally perceived to have put its hefty thumb on the electoral scales in order to elevate its preferred candidate, former cricket star Imran Khan. Khan’s main rival, former three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, had been kicked out of office and sent to jail for corruption.
Not much has changed. Except, this time, it is Khan who was kicked out of office in 2022 and packed off to jail for alleged graft. He continues to face dozens of additional criminal charges, of wildly varying importance and credibility. While his status as “prisoner no. 804” in Attock jail had already disqualified him from running, last week — as if to lock and triple-lock his cell — he was convicted in three more cases: one for corruption, one for leaking state secrets, and one for marrying his third wife in an “un-Islamic” manner.