Respect army's decision to remain neutral, says PM Imran

Prime Minister Imran Khan remains impudently defiant. His self-aggrandising rhetoric may be appealing to his politically naïve cult followers, but it cannot change the inevitable: his government has lost parliamentary majority – and hence the right to stay in power. But he doesn’t want to concede. And he doesn’t want to fight democratically either.

Defections in his party and betrayal by allies have unsettled him. And like the biblical Samson, he is now willing to bring down the entire system and bury his arch-foes with him under its rubble because he believes they are in bed with the “United States which wants a regime change” in Pakistan.

In a video message, he called upon his supporters on Saturday to rise up against the “US plot to topple” his government. “Raise your voice and stage protests against this conspiracy – not for me but for the future of this country,” Khan told his young supporters.

The underlying objective of this call for nationwide protests appears to be sowing chaos through rioting in an effort to sabotage the vote of no-confidence against him which he claims has been orchestrated and bankrolled by the US through “traitor politicians” of Pakistan.

Khan has already hinted that he won’t accept the result of the no-confidence vote. “How can I accept the result when the entire process is discredited?” Khan told a select group of foreign journalists at his office. “Democracy functions on moral authority - what moral authority is left after this connivance?”

“The move to oust me is blatant interference in domestic politics by the United States,” Reuters news agency quoted Khan as saying.

Khan might use the “foreign plot” narrative to reverse his sagging political fortunes, but it has already been dismissed by the quarters dealing with external security threats. They say that if there was an imminent threat, certain actions would have been taken by now.

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One thing is clear: Khan has run out of options. And in his desperation, political observers fear that he might go for street agitation to create political chaos.

There are fears that the ruling party might also orchestrate physical assaults on its MPs who have switched sides to support the vote of no-confidence.

However, security has been stepped up in the capital in general and in and around the Parliament House in particular to maintain law and order during the constitutional process.

For his supporters, Khan might have refused to give in to the “cabal of thieves” when they turned the heat on him. But this wasn’t the case. Apparently, Khan desperately wanted to wriggle out of the crisis. And he knew only the military could help.

“A few days back, a senior cabinet member approached the military leadership on behalf of the prime minister with a request for mediation to defuse the political crisis,” a credible military source told The Express Tribune.

The move came on the heels of a rally by the ruling party in the capital on March 27 which Khan wanted to use to show his street power and deter the opposition – and possibly to put pressure on the security establishment to intervene to avert chaos in the country.

The prime minister was told that he had three constitutional options in the given political scenario: to dissolve the assemblies and call fresh elections; step down as prime minister or to face the vote of no-confidence, the source said, dispelling the impression that the military intervened on its own.

The impression was created by Khan himself in a television interview on Friday in which he said that the security establishment had given him three offers.

According to the source, Khan was not amenable to the first two options because the first meant conceding defeat in his crusade against corruption, while the second was humiliation as no prime minister has ever been removed from office through a vote of no-confidence in the parliamentary history of Pakistan.

Read more: ‘Confident’ Imran assures PTI lawmakers of victory in no-trust vote

However, he said he could consider the third option, should the opposition withdraw the vote of no confidence against him. The message was conveyed by the military leadership to the heads of three main opposition parties who “rejected” it with one voice.

“We have already mounted a constitutional struggle and now there is no room for negotiations,” the source quoted the opposition politicians as saying in response to Khan’s offer.

The government wants to sabotage the vote of no-confidence which, it knows for sure, Prime Minister Khan cannot survive. The government consulted the attorney general for Pakistan and the National Assembly speaker who said it’s not possible to escape the constitutional process.

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Khan’s party is believed to have mounted a social media campaign to pile up pressure on the security establishment to save the embattled government. The military, however, has already made it clear that it would steer clear of politics and remain neutral in the political duel between the government and opposition.