Imran Khan is stable after march shooting. Is Pakistan?

Seven months after he was ousted by a parliamentary vote of no confidence, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had planned to march triumphantly into the capital, Islamabad, next week at the head of hundreds of thousands of his supporters and compel the government to call early elections.

Instead, he was rushed to the hospital on Thursday after a man opened fire on his convoy, injuring Mr. Khan in the foot. By Friday evening he had recovered sufficiently to hold a press conference, blaming the apparent assassination attempt on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a top general in Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

But behind the drama reigns a widespread atmosphere of distrust and discord among Pakistani voters, say ordinary citizens and political analysts, after decades of opaque dealings between the country’s political leaders and the military.

“Why should we have any faith in politics when our leaders have consistently demonstrated that they are only interested in power?” says Asif Ghani, who works at a toy store in Rawalpindi, a city adjacent to the capital.

“When the current government was in opposition, they were demanding free and fair elections and Imran was saying that the parliament would complete its term,” Mr. Ghani recalls. “Now Imran is saying he wants free and fair elections, and the government is saying it intends to complete its term. What is the ordinary person supposed to conclude from all this?”

For local political commentator Murtaza Solangi, Mr. Khan’s crusade against graft and nepotism, branding all his political opponents as “a band of crooks,” has polarized Pakistani society.

Yesterday’s apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Khan, he argues, is just the latest symptom of a country rent by discord. “The seeds of bigotry and intolerance sown by our deep state and nourished by many politicians, including Imran Khan himself, are now bearing fruit,” he says.

Deep distrust

In the months since his ouster as prime minister, Mr. Khan has launched a three-pronged attack against the Pakistani army, Washington, and the coalition government led by Mr. Sharif, all of which he blames for his downfall.

His campaign has propelled his party to a string of by-election victories, but has been less successful in mobilizing support for his planned siege on the capital. Mr. Khan had expected a tsunami of demonstrators to follow him from Lahore to Islamabad and overthrow the government; in fact, until yesterday’s attack, the “Freedom March” had struggled to gather momentum.

That, says Ahtasham Mangool, a manager in a medical company in Rawalpindi, is because people do not trust politicians to work for the public good. “Imran Khan says he will bring accountability into the system but look at the people he has around him,” he says. “These are the same people who have never let anyone prosper in their constituencies. How can we believe that they will ever let anyone succeed except for themselves?”

With annual inflation running at around 26% in October, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the government, but not much enthusiasm for Mr. Khan as an alternate. Though his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, won the most recent parliamentary by-election last month, only 35% of voters bothered to cast a ballot.

Such is the mistrust in the political system that some even question whether the attempt on Mr. Khan’s life was genuine. “I think Imran Khan did it himself because his march was failing and he wanted to get a boost from the public,” says Saleem, a daily wage laborer who asked to be identified only by his given name. “Everyone knows that the army runs the country and Imran Khan made a big mistake by crossing them. The generals will never let anyone else take control.”

The ever-present army

Civil-military discord has troubled Pakistan throughout its 75-year history, and the country has oscillated between overt and covert military rule.  

Mr. Khan’s critics contend that his victory in the 2018 elections would not have been possible without the army’s interference, and they chided him when he was serving as prime minister for having been “selected,” rather than elected. But as soon as rifts developed between Mr. Khan and his military backers, the same opposition exploited this breakdown to return to power.

“The mess we are in today is largely due to the fact that political leaders are not united on key issues concerning the country’s political system,” says veteran political analyst Raza Ahmad Rumi, who teaches at Ithaca College in New York.

“They all think that making bids and deals with the army will give them power, so when they are in opposition they look for a deal, and when they are in government they defend the armed forces,” Mr. Rumi adds. This has further eroded trust in the political system.

“Imran Khan used to say that the military establishment was on his side. Now he blames them for removing him from power,” points out toy salesman Mr. Ghani.

Mr. Khan differs from his predecessors, argues Mr. Rumi, in that he doesn’t pretend to stand for constitutional supremacy. “His public posturing does not demand that the military should go back to the barracks,” Mr. Rumi says. “In fact, what he says is that the military should act on his behalf and install him because he is cleaner and more honest than his political opponents.”

How the apparent attempt on his life will impact Mr. Khan politically is still unclear. But “as a shrewd politician who uses every crisis as an opportunity,” says Mr. Solangi, “Imran will use this as a pressure valve to make maximum gains.”