Two years into the Prime Minister’s term and the Pakistani establishment’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of how soon can this government be sent packing home. Imran Khan is the latest to be struck by a Pakistani ‘jinx’ in which no Prime Minister has been able to survive a full five-year term in office. However, when it comes to Khan, it will not be for a lack of trying.
As the Supreme Court-mandated National Assembly session on 9 April drew to the closing hour, it seemed that the good captain and his coterie were ready to extend the proceedings to a time when the next elections were due – anything other than allowing the no-confidence motion to be passed, that is. If it took a C130 to kickstart a sputtering democracy in Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s Pakistan in 1988, this time around there was allegedly a helicopter that came into play in Pakistan’s version of Game of Thrones.
If ever there was a populace that was the living embodiment of Yeat’s words of “I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams”, it had been a Pakistani public circa 2018, looking forward to the tsunami of change Imran Khan had promised with the launch of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI).