ISLAMABAD: Cricket hero Imran Khan rode a wave of discontent to finally break through as a serious player in Pakistani politics at last year’s election. Now he is aiming even higher, leading thousands on a march to the capital in a bid to unseat the prime minister.
But in taking his campaign to force out Nawaz Sharif on to the streets of Islamabad, Khan may have overplayed his hand.
This weekend his crowd of followers was already thinning out, and without overt support from the military his protests are unlikely to be a game-changer.
Thousands showed up for his rally on Saturday, but some supporters grumbled they had slept out in the rain while Khan relaxed in his nearby mansion.
“The path he’s chosen is one of protest,” said Samina Ahmed, South Asia director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank.
“Now the question is: does he have a strategy beyond the protest?”
Even if the protest movement fizzles, however, Sharif will have been left weakened and less likely to challenge the country’s powerful military on security and foreign policy, which Pakistan’s generals have long considered to be their domain.
Khan accuses Sharif of rigging last year’s election, which marked the first democratic transition in Pakistan’s turbulent history, and last week vowed to occupy Islamabad until the prime minister resigns.
The government has warned that his protest, and another led by fiery cleric Tahir ul-Qadri, could destabilise the nuclear-armed nation of 180 million, which has seen a succession of military coups and is struggling to stifle a Taliban insurgency.
It fears Khan is trying to force a confrontation so the army will once again intervene, or that the military is manipulating Khan from behind the scenes.
There is no doubt that the military brass dislike Sharif, who stormed back to power for a third time last year after his party won a clear majority of parliament’s seats.
Sharif has put former military head Pervez Musharraf, who abruptly ended his last stint as prime minister in a 1999 coup, on trial for treason. (PTI)
