The gods have been cruel to Imran Khan. Just as he was soaring upwards in the final hours of his electoral campaign, this mane-haired, middle-aged Icarus fell, injuring himself and his party’s prospects at the polls.  

At the moment, Imran Khan lies in a bed, supine, immobile. It is many a female yuppie’s dream. Unfortunately, it is a hospital bed in the Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Lahore, the cancer facility he established primarily from donations made by the very persons amongst others who have supported his political campaign. The momentum that he had built up with such vigour for his party - the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) - collapsed just as it was reaching a crescendo.  Ironically, the election campaign that he fought with such bravado has yielded a result that he may regret.

From the unofficial results, two realities have emerged. The first, the PTI does not have enough seats in the National Assembly to make Imran Khan the next prime minister of Pakistan. That trophy goes to Mian Nawaz Sharif. Secondly, the PTI has too many seats in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa to avoid being its next government. 

It will take some time for the Election Commission of Pakistan to declare the final tally. Logically, there should be no delay in announcing the results where there is no dispute, i.e. the majority of the constituencies. Where a recount has been demanded (NA 125, for one) or where, as in Karachi, a re-poll will be necessary in more than one seat, it may take a little time for the final figures to be announced and notified. Whatever may be the results of such a re-poll, though, they are unlikely to affect the overall configuration at the national level. Even without an absolute majority, PML-N has enough seats to form the next government with either the MQM or the PTI as its coalition partner. Interestingly, they are both eligible as they have both gained almost the same number of seats in the National Assembly. 

The vision Nawaz Sharif has for Pakistan’s future is clear. It is based on his experience. He has been prime minister of Pakistan twice. It is predicated on pragmatism. He has not forgotten US President Clinton’s intervention over Kargil in 1999, nor Saudi support when he was under trial on the orders of his nemesis General Pervez Musharraf. He is too mature not to be aware of the economic, social and theocratic boundaries within which he will be expected to operate, locally and internationally. 

Locally, in the short-term, he will need to tackle the energy deficit. Summer outages are never a happy time for new governments. Pakistan has an energy deficit compounded by a circular debt that ricochets between a bankrupt Government, unpaid producers, a leaking transmission network, and defaulting distribution companies. It is more than likely that Saudi Arabia will come to his aid yet again. An immediate solution would be for Nawaz Sharif to negotiate with the Saudis for a supply of furnace oil at a concessional rate, preferably with soft payment terms.

The International Monetary Fund has kept Pakistan’s programme for the next year on ice until the new government could be formed. Some weeks ago, it received a delegation cobbled together by the Interim Cabinet, but no decision were expected nor any taken, since it was clear that both sides were following a wait-until-we-leave and wait-until-you-have-gone strategy. Mian Nawaz Sharif has already identified Ishaq Dar (an in-law and former FM) as his Finance Minister. Dar knows the ropes and should be able to tie the necessary knots swiftly and securely with the IMF.

On Foreign Policy, Nawaz Sharif will follow the doctrine enunciated by his dear friend, the late I.K. Gujral. He wants to practice what Gujral preached - peace with every neighbour and goodwill to all men, especially Indians. India can therefore expect an increasing intensity in Indo-Pak courtship, without the discouraging presence of a military chaperone. The Army though will watch with more than a casual interest Nawaz Sharif’s treatment of General Musharraf.  Sharif may be well-advised to show Musharraf the same magnanimity he received when the tables were different a decade ago.  

On religious extremism, Nawaz Sharif’s Ka’aba in more ways than one is located in Saudi Arabia.  He knows better than the rightist Islamic parties do – for he has been in power and they have not – the balance every Pakistani prime minister has to maintain between hard-line extremists, temperate moderates, and the secular faint-hearted.  

In a sense, all of Nawaz Sharif’s three wishes have been granted. He has the prime ministership of the country for the next five years, through his brother Shahbaz he retains absolute control of the Punjab (which represents 62% of the country), and he does not have to deal directly with the problems of Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.

From his sickbed, Imran Khan has taken his first important decision. He has ‘supported’ PTI’s KP President Asad Qaisar bid as Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhawa. By doing so he has admitted that personally he would prefer Islamabad over Peshawar, to oppose (and if necessary, serve) in a federal heaven than to rule in a provincial hell.

What are the traumas though that his PTI-led government can expect to face in that troubled province?

The first has to be the establishment of the writ of the state in an area where disobedience outside the clan and armed individualism are regarded as manly virtues.

The second is to fill the political vacuum left by the annihilation of the Awami National Party, led by Isfandiyar Wali Khan, the grandson of Bacha Khan – known in India (and therefore not in Pakistan) as the Frontier Gandhi. Despite sixty years of hereditary dominance, the ANP was not able to win a single seat in the province. It was like evicting a dynasty of Nehrus/Gandhis without a day’s notice.    

The third is to stop the US drone attacks. In this, the PTI may find the solution already on the shelf. The US and its allies will be withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2014. Osama Bin Laden is already in Davy Jones’s locker. Drone attacks are showing a diminishing return. After Iraq and Afghanistan, Syria is and will continue to be the new theatre of war. Why waste drones here?

On female education and child immunization, the PTI will need to remember that Malala Yusufzai (the world’s youngest Nobel nominee and the West’s latest icon) belongs to Swat which lies within Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.

Perhaps the most intractable problem will be the unholy trinity of a predictably unsettled post-2014 Afghanistan, an intractable Taliban, and linked to it, the anti-MQM Pakhtuns who labour in Karachi’s industries and manage Pakistan’s road transportation services. They have as strong a hold on our economy as the other batch of Khans do in Mumbai’s Bollywood.

The next five years will be the apprenticeship in governance that Imran Khan and his PTI team (except for a few like Shah Mehmood Qureshi or Shafqat Mahmood) never had. If they learn now, they will be able to teach during the following five years. Their performance in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa will be the litmus test for the General Elections 2018.  

Does this imply that Imran Khan’s slogan ‘Naya Pakistan’ will be relegated to the shelf of history like Kennedy’s New Frontier and Nixon’s New Federalism?

The answer is an unequivocal ‘No’.  Imran may not have been able to succeed in gaining as many seats in the National and the Provincial Assemblies as he had hoped. He may have been handed government of a province that will force him to bond with a race with which he has identified himself superficially, rather like the Afro-American US actor Sidney Poitier once did (or didn’t) with his.

What Imran Khan has been able to achieve is to weld the Pakistanis together on 11 May into one nation, to remind them of their rights as voters and the potency of their vote, and to attract them to the polling booths to deliver their mandate.

According to Pakistan’s Election Commission, the turnout was almost 60% out of an electorate of 86 million. The old came in wheelchairs, some came clutching walkers, the middle-aged supported themselves on hope, and the young came beaming rainbows. That is the New Pakistan Imran Khan has unleashed.  They may not have won the seats they aspired for in 2013. They will count the days until 2018.

© F.S. AIJAZUDDIN, The Tribune, Chandigarh, 17 May 2013.