Political earthquake in Pakistan. The clear favorite to win next year's elections and regain power, Imran Jan, has been disqualified this Friday by the Electoral Commission for the next five years. The argument put forward is that, while he was head of government, until last April, he did not declare all the gifts received on state visits.
The veto could mean the political death of the seventy-year-old captain of the cricket team. The Pakistani press has long focused on alleged gifts in the form of watches, designer bags or perfumes, valued at hundreds of thousands of euros, that Jan and his wife would have received during their official visits abroad. According to these media, not all would have been declared, to be resold.
In Pakistan, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, the charges would seem almost harmless, were it not for the fact that Jan had built his political capital on his honesty, in the face of systematic looting of the state by his opponents. Likewise, it represents a barrage against his vaunted independence, in the face of the qualification of "import government" that he habitually dedicates to his successors, an amalgamation of rivals and turncoats who unseated him last April, in a motion of censure in which supposedly millions of dollars changed hands.
Imran Jan has already announced that he will appeal the decision. The former athlete who rubbed shoulders with London high society rose in Pakistani politics with the discreet support of the military leadership against the traditional political class. However, the kick in the world chessboard that was the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 has turned the tables. That same day, Jan was meeting Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, a visit he had refused to postpone.
The head of the army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who should have gone into the reserve this October, saw the opportunity to rebuild the relationship with the United States - very deteriorated as a result of the Pakistani patronage of the Taliban in Afghanistan - to the detriment of India. And lastly, tie up loans that save Pakistan from bankruptcy, already experienced by Sri Lanka. As well as extending his mandate and his line in the Armed Forces, in which Jan dared to interfere trying to keep his own candidate in the all-powerful intelligence agency, ISI.
Time has proved him right and India's white glove with Russia, honoring its ancient alliance, has served to polish the traditional partnership between Washington and the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
The intervention of the Electoral Commission, behind which the will of the military leadership can be guessed, threatens to stir up the streets in Pakistan. The youth and the middle classes are massively behind Jan and see his disqualification as proof that Shahbaz Sharif's government is incapable of revalidating itself cleanly at the polls. They also remember that before Jan state gifts could be purchased by the leaders for 20% of their value, a percentage that his idol raised to 50%.
This lawsuit, in court for more than a year, was one of the two swords of Damocles that weighed on Jan, the other being the alleged contempt of a judge, whom he criticized - "threatened", according to the prosecutor - for stop his right hand.
