Imran & America.

SHEHBAZ Sharif's government is inching close to default. Hindsight is 20/20 but what was the point of the no-confidence vote, many are asking, if there was no economic plan? Why jump on to the Titanic when it was already sinking? Why bear the political fallout of IMF-mandated measures when those measures were assented to and then reneged on by the previous government?

Answers, of course, aren't straightforward. Had the no-confidence vote not gone through, there was always the chance, as Khurram Dastgir recently recounted, of Imran Khan appointing a partisan army chief and barring opposition leaders from contesting elections en masse, thereby turning Pakistan into a fascist one-party state and assuming the role of a civilian dictator.

There is also the possibility that Shehbaz Sharif saw this as a unique opportunity to become prime minister and couldn't resist, even as the more politically astute brother, Nawaz, cautioned against it. For their part, the kingmakers have always looked upon Shehbaz as an efficient administrator who is relatively innocuous compared to brother Nawaz, who, along with daughter Maryam, are not to be trusted.

Yet what difference do palace intrigues and political machinations make to the lives of ordinary Pakistanis, who are rapidly losing faith in the current government's ability to manage? In light of this bleak and dire political scenario, could Imran Khan make a comeback? The short answer is: no, he cannot.

The former PM had made some politically fatal moves.

Regardless of how popular or unpopular he may be (depending on who one talks to), or how well he spins his own failures and his opponents' misfortunes, in his final days, Imran Khan made some politically fatal moves in his desperation to hang on to power.

Not only did he go after the 'neutrals', but he also ensured that he crossed the most powerful country on earth, the United States of America. The Americans were never particularly keen on Imran, even when he came to power in 2018. He was viewed as a stooge of the military, and given the uneasy relationship between the Pakistani military and the US in the aftermath of the war on terror, US engagement with Imran Khan wasn't going to be smooth.

'Pakistan's military has its fingerprints all over the elections', ran a headline in the Washington Post back in July 2018. But Imran had insisted that he knew the West better than any other Pakistani and had convinced the kingmakers that foreign policy would be his...

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