The crucial question, at least in Rawalpindi, isn’t who will be prime minister or if the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) will form the government. These are both second-order concerns. The important question is, with time running out, who owns Pakistan now: Imran Khan or Pakistani voters?
The attempt to draw this distinction would be viewed as sacrilege by Khan supporters, yet it is possibly the most significant internal policy problem in Pakistan today. To put it another way, the question is whether Imran Khan won the election or the status quo lost it.
If Pindi has determined that the extraordinary PTI showing in the February 8 election is mostly a result of Imran Khan ,Given his populist policies, the effort to muzzle the PTI and its members would most likely continue. If, instead, it perceives the election results as a generational manifestation of Pakistan’s overwhelmingly youthful, underserved, and gloomy populace’s dissatisfaction with the dinosaur status quo, the pressure on the PTI will likely ease. More opportunities for the PTI to reestablish its position as a power broker are then expected to emerge.
The continuous references to the current game as a zero-sum equation between individuals (military or civilian) draw the study into area where personalities, such as Imran Khan, are the focal point. They may well be.If large-scale, system-wide dynamics are more important than individuals, military or civilian, then the heart of the conversation is Pakistanis’ agency, whether they were among the roughly 20 million who voted for PTI-endorsed candidates or the nearly twice as many who voted for candidates who were not endorsed by the PTI.
