Pakistan can ill-afford costly power vacuum
- With a general election failing to deliver a decisive result, the crisis-hit country’s largest creditor, China, is among those fearing further instability
What Pakistan’s stricken economy most needed from a troubled election campaign was a decisive result that would have boosted the authority of a new government to deal with a financial crisis. As its largest creditor, close ally and Belt and Road Initiative partner, China has an abiding interest. But no party won a majority of seats to enable it to rule in its own right, despite the military-led establishment’s backing for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party.
Instead the success of independents aligned with jailed former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) is a blow to the army’s long-standing political influence. As a result, the country faces a power vacuum amid negotiations to form a coalition government ahead of an April deadline for a new bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Coalition unity will be tested by tough negotiations that lie ahead.
The election followed the jailing of Khan for leaking state secrets and corruption, after he fell out with the military and was removed from office in a confidence vote. The campaign was marked by bombings that took scores of lives. Some PTI leaders were in detention or hiding. The PTI claimed it would have done even better but for widespread vote-rigging. Other alleged irregularities included delays to vote counting and a mobile network blackout.
Pakistan set for coalition after troubled election, as Sharif trails rival Khan
Nawaz’s PML-N party is expected to try to govern as the senior partner in coalition with rival and former president Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). Its priority is to renegotiate a financial assistance programme with the IMF. Meanwhile China has kept Pakistan solvent by refinancing US$7 billion of low-cost loans.
It is problematical whether the economy can stabilise without additional support from the West and the Gulf region. Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Britain, the United States and the United Nations, said Beijing’s US$28 billion of investments in energy and connectivity under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor programme would not be affected by the election. Let’s hope she is right. The economy is in tatters and any instability amid a power vacuum will also become China’s and the region’s problem.
