Imran Khan

For seeking to destabilise the Pakistan government without much justification

Pakistan is said to be a country hurtling towards chaos, and Imran Khan, leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, is now contributing his bit towards that end. After making a bizarre call to citizens to abstain from paying electricity bills and taxes, which met with much derision within the country that is ridden by tax defaults and power shortages, Khan has since 15 August been leading a large anti-government agitation right outside the Pakistani parliament.

This week he refused to call the agitation off, insisting on Nawaz Sharif resigning, if only temporarily. Imran says that the government was elected through large-scale rigging and is therefore not legitimate. It begs the question of why he is raising this issue of legitimacy now when the elections happened in May 2013. And even more telling is that his own party won in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK; formerly called North-West Frontier Province) but he conveniently refrains from talking about any rigging there. What Imran is indulging in is political opportunism. It might reap dividends for his party but Pakistan’s continued destabilisation does not bode well for the Subcontinent.

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