Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan came to power in 2018 with the accusation of being selected by the countrys powerful military establishment.
This is why the Opposition parties termed Khan as “selected” and called his ruling government a “hybrid regime”.
Khan came with a reputation of being a celebrity image, who would be best suited to be the premier and work towards easing down tensions with the West and correct the image of the country, which struggled to establish its image of being much more than a terror harbouring country in the eyes of the western world.
With 3.5 years completed of his ruling, it seems that Khan has taken a U-turn from his assigned task and opted to take an anti-American narrative, with his party members raising slogans of “death to America”.
The narrative has been formed after Khan claimed that the US is plotting a massive conspiracy to oust his government, after his visit to Russia on the eve of the day when Moscow carried our its first air strikes in Ukraine, which has now become an all-out invasion and war.
Khan said that his visit to Russia irked the Americans and that is why the latter decided to use the Opposition parties to move a no-confidence motion against him.
“Money has been flooded into Pakistan through these Opposition parties to buy the loyalties of our party members and coalition partners. Can we allow any other country to interfere in our country’s national interest and plot a conspiracy to topple the government, only because I refused to join their bloc against Russia and went ahead with my visit,” Khan asked.
The anti-American narrative is working well with the supporters of Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), but the same narrative is the reason why the military establishment has pushed itself away from supporting Khan.
Khan claims that the ‘threatening letter’, which is part of a diplomatic cable communication, exposed the fact that the Opposition parties are working hands in glove with an international conspiracy to oust his government. Khan has even gone to the extent of declaring his Opposition as traitors because of the same conspiracy.
However, Khan’s claims do not seem to be getting a nod from the country under question, nor from his own military establishment.
The US has denied the allegations and termed them as baseless, while the officials in the military establishment have also revealed that they did not find any evidence to establish a foreign conspiracy in the letter.
Since the military establishment seems to be keeping itself away from the ongoing political chaos in the country, Khan continues to flare up the anti-American narrative and keeps calling on his supporters to take to the streets in protest against a foreign intervention for a regime change in the country.
This is a major concern for the other quarters of the country, who understand that not only is the US and the West the largest trade destinations for Pakistan, they are also important partners to Pakistan, especially with regard to regional security, progress and the developing situation in the war-torn Afghanistan.
Khan is looking towards elections, while the Opposition parties believe that he will have to get through the ruling of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and other legal platforms and be punished for violating the Constitution by dissolving the National Assembly and blocking the voting on the no-confidence motion.
(IANS)
