Barred from running, Khan still the people’s choice

According to the army’s script for Pakistan’s parliamentary election, the PLMN party led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif would win a plurality if not a majority of seats, enabling him to form a pliant government leaving the military establishment in effective control of foreign and security policy. Voters had other ideas. In a remarkable rebuke to Pakistan’s machine politics, candidates from the jailed Imran Khan’s PTI party, running as independents having been barred from running under the party banner, won 93 seats to form the largest bloc. For now, its rivals are combining to keep Khan and his supporters out of power. The PLMN and the PPP – led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of the assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto – issued a statement saying they would work together to restore stability to a country that has known little of it since Khan’s imprisonment last year on charges of corruption and marrying illegally. The PLMN and PPP have joined forces before, to remove Khan from power in 2022. How they will now persuade his supporters they have been listened to is entirely unclear.