Pakistan is locked in a three-way contest for power between populist former prime minister Imran Khan, who survived an assassination attempt in November 2022, military leaders and members of the current governing coalition, formed by traditional political parties representing continuity rather than change.
In May 2022, Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan announced that his life was in danger due to what he called a conspiracy led by domestic and foreign political opponents. He had left office a month earlier as the country’s first political leader to have been deposed by a vote of no confidence in parliament. Khan’s concern about political violence was ultimately validated when he was shot on 3 November at a rally in Wazirabad in Punjab province. These events immediately brought to mind the unsolved 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, another popular former prime minister with significant political aspirations.
Khan, who was leading a ‘long march’ to pressure the coalition government that succeeded him to call elections early, survived the attack. He was in the middle of a speech when he was shot in the leg by at least one gunman. Some basic facts of the attack are still unknown. One perpetrator was arrested, but his motives, at least as described by the police and reported by the press, remain unclear. Khan has subsequently accused a sitting government minister and a senior military-intelligence official of involvement in the attack. Khan’s opponents, meanwhile, have suggested that the attack was a false-flag operation organised by Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and designed to garner sympathy for his cause. Neither Khan nor his opponents have produced evidence to substantiate these claims.
No comments:
Post a Comment