Pakistan PM Imran Khan is facing an immediate challenge to his leadership from opposition parties that united over the weekend to appoint firebrand cleric Maulana Fazalur Rehman to lead the freshly-minted 11 parties anti-government alliance trying to unseat him. Khan faces other challenges as well, some of them much more immediate. Next month’s meeting of the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, is one. The meeting, scheduled for 21-23 October, is to decide on Imran Khan’s request to take Pakistan off the global watchdog’s ‘grey list’ was the other one.
A 26-point resolution adopted by the coalition – they call it Pakistan Democratic Movement – a fortnight earlier seeks to force “the selected prime minister’s resignation and an end to the role of the establishment in politics.” It also wants to ensure the “end of establishment’s interference in politics”, a reference to the army. The opposition’s combined attack on the powerful military is unusual in Pakistan; the army has ruled Pakistan for roughly half of its 73-year history and often had the last word in the country’s governance for the other half. Imran Khan, who came to power on the back of populist assurances to root out corruption, faces allegations that his anti-corruption drive only aims at opposition leaders. In July this year, Pakistan’s top court also remarked in one case that the anti-corruption watchdog appeared “reluctant in proceeding against people on one side of the political divide”.
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