Just on the 10th of last month, there was a bloodless "coup" in Pakistan: the Pakistani National Assembly convened a meeting to oust Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, and the next day elected the leader of the opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League President Shabaz Sharif, as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan.
But there is no doubt that Imran Khan, who was forced out of power, will not give up on this. After more than a month and a half of preparation, with the support of thousands of supporters, imran Khan, now, began his own "revenge".
According to reports, starting from May 25 local time, a protest team led by Imran Khan, former prime minister of Pakistan and chairman of the Pakistan Justice Movement Party (PTI), officially began its large-scale march and protest. By the 26th, the procession entered Islamabad and clashed with police outside the Parliament Building.
Imran Khan declared before the march that the April 10 recall vote was a conspiracy organized by the United States to oppose the current "import government," the National Assembly must be dissolved, and that an early general election was held in June.
So is this recall really a conspiracy of the United States?
To understand all this, we must first start with the political ecology in Pakistan.
Although since its founding in 1947, Pakistan has established an electoral and parliamentary system that is fully modeled on the Western world, as an agrarian country based on a backward tribal system, Pakistan's poor imitation of Western democracy eventually led to Pakistani politics being dominated by a freak called "door valve politics".
To put it simply, this kind of "door valve politics" means that some politicians take their own family tribes in local provinces as the basic disk, turn the entire local provinces into their own private property, and then use this as the original reserve fund to continuously attract other political forces in the form of economic bribery and political interest transmission, and finally form a huge community of intertwined political interests.
Take, for example, the most representative of the Sharif family. Its family base is punjab province, the largest population in the country and in fact the strongest province in Pakistan. The province accounts for more than 60% of Pakistan's GDP and produces 80% of the country's grain, 75% fertilizer, 70% sugar and 40% cement.
Unfortunately, the companies and government departments that have created these economic achievements are mostly controlled by the Sharif family. As a result, the Sharif family and their allies have been the number one political force in Pakistani politics for a long time. But at the same time, this monopoly behavior has also led to a serious gap between the rich and the poor in Pakistan, and other small and medium-sized enterprises and people at the bottom of the country are seriously dissatisfied with the Sharif family.
Since there are "evil dragons", there must be "heroes". Imran Khan, on the other hand, is such a "civilian hero" who adapts to the times:
Imran Khan led the Pakistani cricket team to win the Cricket World Cup in the 1990s and is regarded as a national hero by the people of Pakistan. Out of hatred for the political corruption of Pakistan's door valves, Imran Khan established the Pakistan Justice Movement Party from 1996, gradually accumulating popularity, and finally successfully elected as the prime minister of the Pakistani government in the July 2018 general election.
But after the fairy tale of "Hero Slaying the Dragon", what awaits Imran Khan is not "they live happily ever after", but the "evil dragon" waiting to be slaughtered:
Fundamentally, Imran Khan moved the cheese of the conservative forces, which was destined to be overthrown by the doormen sooner or later.
Pakistan's political arena has long been divided up by various door valves, although there are usually many contradictions between each other, but the sudden killing of Imran Khan is smashing the table where everyone eats.
So no matter how many conflicts there are in the usual days, after the July 2018 election, the doormen who became opposition parties overnight also established an unprecedented offensive and defensive alliance overnight, unanimously electing the most prestigious new generation of Sharif family leader Shabaz Sharif as a representative, vowing to drive this "new outlier" out of Pakistani politics.
On the face of it, Imran Khan's poor socioeconomic performance became the best excuse for conservatives to attack.
Imran Khan was able to send himself to the prime minister's throne with votes from the bottom of society because he made a series of better promises of economic development and social equality to these underclassmen. Unfortunately, during his time in power, Imran Khan's performance surprised everyone, with persistently sluggish GDP growth, falling residents' incomes, high unemployment, fiscal strain, and high external debt.
While much of this is due to the natural disaster of COVID-19, imran Khan is clearly unable to escape when society needs a scapegoat.
Finally, in the political game, Imran Khan's unusually low-energy operation also forced the door valves into a corner that they had to resist.
To put it simply, when Imran Khan sat on the throne of prime minister, he did not change his thinking and co-opted all the door valves as a big boss, but still attacked these door valve forces with the mentality of the opposition party, constantly attacking these door valve forces on the grounds of anti-corruption and other reasons, and eventually even forced the Sharif faction and the old wrongdoers' people's party into alliances.
Having understood the above, we can probably understand why Imran Khan was so unconvinced, and now he is back in his position as the best opposition, instinctively trying to regain everything through street movements again.
So can Imran Khan still do wonders this time?
In our view, the possibilities are slim to none.
First of all, although dubbed a "coup", the relevant operations of the Pakistani National Assembly are indeed fully in line with Pakistani law, and Imran Khan cannot overthrow Shabaz Sharif's government through judicial channels, only to wait for the next general election to come as soon as possible;
Second, as mentioned earlier, the reason why conservative forces can succeed in seizing power is that Imran Khan himself has not been able to deliver on his promises to the people at the bottom. As a result, the number of people who are now willing to stand up for Imran Khan is far less than Imran Khan expected.
Finally, the military and the United States, which are most closely related to the reversal, are firmly on the side of conservative forces this time.
Imran Khan, as a lone hero to go to war with the entire Pakistani gate valve tribe, support from both the military and the United States is essential. But Imran Khan is an outspoken Pakistani nationalist who has always hated Americans and is the most anti-American Pakistani government in recent decades.
In the face of the military, Imran Khan completely disregarded the interests of the military, such as in this Russo-Ukrainian War, the Pakistani military resolutely opposed Russia's reckless actions, but Imran Khan is one of the very few leaders in the world who openly supports Russia's relevant military operations.
By the way, the Pakistani military is one of the biggest "Beauty Fans" in Pakistan. So at this time Imran Khan is still shouting that this is all an "American conspiracy", trying to co-opt the bottom nationalist groups in Pakistan, and with this ability to judge the forces of all sides, the possibility of turning the salted fish over is almost zero.
Of course, we are more concerned about the impact on China's interests than Pakistan's own domestic quarrels.
But what we are saying is that we can put a hundred hearts on this. Because no matter who comes to power, "friendship with China" has become a consensus of all Pakistanis.
As early as the end of 2018, Imran Khan personally visited China for state affairs, signed a large number of relevant cooperation and investment agreements with China, and the construction of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor was also vigorously promoted during his tenure;
And as for the largest door valve, the Sharif family. In fact, the family originally had a strong pro-China tradition, and after experiencing the four years of "rebellion" by Imran Khan, the Sharif family, which had learned its lesson, would only further strengthen its pro-Chinese tendencies.
Here's one more detail. On the same day that Imran Khan stormed the capital with his supporters, Shabaz Sharif was inspecting the Karot Hydropower Station, the first hydropower investment project under construction in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
So, do we really need to worry about China's interests in Pakistan? Imran Khan is unhappy with his ouster, which is Pakistan's internal affair and we will not interfere. But at the same time, all the poles of Pakistani politics understand that China cannot be drawn into this political vortex under any circumstances.
This skillful grasp of China-Pakistan relations is the most firm cornerstone of the friendship between China and Pakistan.