‘Reimagining Pakistan’ party?

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and Miftah Ismail are flirting with idea of a new political party

Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and former federal ministers Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar and Miftah Ismail are still flirting with the idea of forming a new political party. The trio are still touring the country to conduct their ‘Reimagining Pakistan’ seminars, which are ostensibly meant to identify and debate solutions to the challenges facing the country. However, most political watchers acknowledge that the seminars are, at the bare minimum, an effort to gauge whether there is enough space and public interest in another new party.

It’s is understandable for them all to initially say there were no plans to form a party, but recent events and media interactions have seen Khokhar and Ismail shifting tones and suggesting that the space is there and the only thing holding them back is Abbasi’s hesitance. While Khokhar is not exactly checking his pocket for change, Abbasi and Ismail are among the richest politicians in the country, and the sources of their wealth are well documented. But while this puts them in a strong position to bankroll a new party, Ismail has no constituency, per se, having never held elected office and Khokhar lost all of his runs for the National Assembly before being elected to the Senate by the PPP in 2018. Even Abbasi, despite being one of the strongest candidates in his Murree constituency, actually lost in 2018 and is not considered to have significant influence outside the constituency. This leaves the hypothetical party into one that is short on electables and heavy on technocrats. But this might be by design — the trio have claimed they would not want the party to be seen as another set of rubber stamps for the establishment and would prioritise members that reflect this, rather than electability.

At the same time, in a recent interview where Khokhar said the party might be announced within the next month, he said there is still division over whether the party should participate in the next elections, implying that the ‘party chiefs’ are probably focusing on the longer term and just want to make a mark this time around.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2023.

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