Pakistan’s 5 futures (part 1)

As Pakistan enters a phase of complex uncertainty, we can imagine five possible futures.

As Pakistan enters a phase of complex uncertainty, we can imagine five possible futures.

Future 1: Imran is Trumpant (read triumphant)

This is what PTI’s managers, funders and backers—here and abroad—hope to achieve: a Trump-like return to the realm as his opponents become mini Bidens—frail, incomprehensible and fading faster than one could say Joe. For them, the path to this future will decisively open up with the retirement of the present chief justice, Qazi Faez Isa, replaced by Justice Mansoor later this year. This they think will set the tone for challenging the results of the 2024 polls in totality, altering the balance of power in the parliament or causing fresh elections in which their victory is foregone. They think the 8-judges verdict in the reserved seats case has already done the first trick for them. The verdict allows the PTI to claim over two dozen members from the PML-N and allies. They also think that the judges will ensure that many other seats come their way as they successfully challenge and win in several dozen constituencies through tribunals hearing complaints of rigging under the hawk eye of an “awakened judiciary”.

For them the formidable combination of the Islamabad High Court and the Supreme Court led by the upcoming chief justice is hard to beat. And if an attempt is made to browbeat this tag-team, the bars will erupt into a national movement, and, after momentary chaos, a general Musharraf vs Iftikhar Chaudhary like situation will emerge forcing the Establishment to relent. They also think that given the mood in the judiciary they will be able to bring Imran out from his incarceration. If small-time workers’ future arrests could be prevented and pre-empted by the judges, what would stop them from offering the same privilege to Imran who holds irresistible charm for some of the men in robes.

The PTI is also counting on Donald Trump’s return to power. There are credible reports of an exceptional outreach that Imran’s foreign friends have made to the Trump family flagging the Imran case and reminding the Republican’s nominee that he and Imran are natural twins, so far away and yet so alike in their lives lived, destined to do great things as modern messiahs. The outreach also reminded the Trump family how Biden kept Imran hanging for years and never called him. Now that’s one way to get Trump’s attention: just say “bitten by Biden” and he will send his ambulance.

The US elections are still some months away but signs are legion that Donald after his successful ducking of the assassination attempt is a raging storm that the Democrats have no answer to. Washington under Trump, the judiciary under Justice Mansoor and all the collective public and political anger against poor governance, the Establishment and a murky national scene could coalesce in a few months to defeat the General Asim Munir-backed Shehbaz government that even Fitch describes as comprising “Establishment parties.”

A variation of this future envisages a more complicated unfolding. This is the one in which the Establishment’s stubbornness in the face of constant retreat in constitutional politics breeds a bout of national emergency, or worse, a martial law, but the economic, social, judicial and international fall out of the move would nonetheless force a negotiated settlement brokered by international stakeholders like China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Also, the fear of (or actual imposition of) US sanctions and IMF preconditioning loan installments release (to put in layperson’s terms) to a constitutionally-mandated government would drive the mighty generals back towards the barracks and Imran to the PM House.

This future, very popular among the PTI’s Lahore group of lawyers and judges, and the Goldsmithian clique in London and Washington, compresses complex realities into feelgood presumptions. It believes Imran to be the Ray (Tom Cruise) of the War of the Worlds who survives aliens’ extermination, gets united with his lost family, and, thanks to the miracle of microbes annihilating the ruthless attackers, comes out as the ultimate accomplisher of a mission impossible. However, Pakistan’s political life is stranger than Hollywood’s science fictions. This future is a possibility. At least the PTI thinks so. However, this is just one future. There is another one too. This one pans out very differently from the first. This is Pakistan’s Future 2. (Next episode)