Buried under an avalanche of convictions that seem premeditated, Imran Khan Niazi is ineligible to participate in the February 8 general elections in Pakistan. Incarcerated since August 2023 in a three-year jail term for selling state gifts worth half a million dollars, Imran was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years for revealing state secrets, as in a missing cable alleging US conspiracy behind his unseating in 2021. As if that were not sufficient, he was further sentenced (along with his wife Bushra Bibi) on the very next day to 14 years in the Toshakhana case by an anti-corruption court.
The message is clear. The former Army poster boy is persona non grata after he took on the generals, accusing the army establishment of targeting him and ordering his imprisonment in Adiala Jail, where he also received sentences in cases in which government lawyers represent both sides. So much for the Pakistan justice system at levels lower than the Supreme Court, which does dole out dollops of sanity now and then.
Imran may never be allowed to return to politics, his party derecognised, and his closest aides also jailed or under trial for egging supporters on to violence against the state. But then you can never say never in Pakistan, as the case of Nawaz Sharif proves. Once hounded, convicted, and forced to cut a deal and choose exile over prison, as it was in the case of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, too, who chose to flee, the Punjab strongman is now eligible to run for office again.
Imran, who picked and chose players at will when he was a successful captain of the Pakistan cricket team that won the World Cup in 1992, should know a thing or two about the whimsicality of leaders. The Army brass is notorious for their vindictiveness to those who do not bow to their military power in a country whose democracy is nominal and yet thought to be free and fair when it comes to handling the polls.
Imran was crushed under the weight of cultivating enmity against two powerful forces — the Pakistan Army and the United States whose President Joe Biden never picked up the phone to speak to him. Given his age, his fierce anti-American views in a country rather dependent on US aid for decades and his rubbing the generals the wrong way, a comeback bid seems unlikely, at least for now.
