Pakistan’s perma-crisis

Imran Khanpti was a terrible prime minister. In office from 2018-2022, the appointed corrupt ministers, locked up his opponents and hounded the press. As Pakistanis rapidly went off him, he peddled desperate anti-American conspiracy theories. Had his government limped on to the general election due later this year, his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf () party would probably have been trounced.That is how democracy is supposed to work. Bad governments get summarily ejected. Fear of a reckoning encourages politicians to do better. One government’s failures are a lesson to its successors. Yet , tragically, has experienced little if any of that. Its arrogant generals, the real power in the country of 240m, have not permitted a prime minister to complete a five-year term. Mr Khan, an erstwhile military favourite, was handed power after the generals toppled his predecessor, and was then himself dismissed last year following an army-orchestrated no-confidence vote. Thereby, the generals helped turn a failed politician into a populist hero, whose rabble-rousing has become a threat to order, even as Pakistan faces a balance-of-payments crisis. It is a textbook example of the incompetence, as well as power-hunger, of the men who presume to run the world’s fifth-most-populous country.