Pakistan’s ruling party concedes loss in stronghold area; what does this mean for Imran Khan's future as PM?

In Pakistan, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party (PTI) has conceded defeat in local polls in the northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Opposition parties have won 21 seats, while Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party has secured six seats in the polls to elect mayors and other local government officials. Counting for 34 other seats is underway, but provisional results show a similar trend. Khan’s party has won the past two provincial polls, as well as the last local body elections in the region. The final results will be announced on 24 December or later. While national elections are only due in 2023, the loss in a party stronghold comes as Khan’s government grapples with the highest inflation along with low growth and high unemployment. The fiscal year of 2020 was the worst year for Pakistanis as witnessed the highest inflation in the world forcing policymakers to increase the interest rate, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). The SBP pushed up interest rates to cool down the inflationary pressure during the fiscal year but high rates proved counterproductive as they further increased inflation while the private sector stopped borrowing costly money hampering industrial growth and services, reported Dawn News. But what does this mean for the cricketer-turned-politician future as prime minister? Let’s take a look. Imran Khan admits mistake Reacting to the major setback suffered by the ruling PTI in the first phase of the local body elections in Khyber Pakhtunkwa, Prime Minister Imran Khan Tuesday admitted that his party paid the price for making mistakes in the polls. Taking to Twitter, Imran said that the selection of wrong candidates was the core reason behind their defeat in the elections in the province.

The party could win one tehsil in Peshawar out of six tehsils in the city — from where it won all the seats in the 2018 general elections. Khan’s unpopularity  This is seen as a major setback for Khan even as general elections are slated for 2023 as he is becoming highly unpopular among the people as inflation and the price of essential food have soared since the pandemic started. Shattering the previous record of 10.45 billion US dollars, Pakistan took out 15.32 billion US dollars in new foreign loans in the fiscal year 2020-21, according to a new government report. According to The Express Tribune, the report shows that the incumbent government has almost doubled Pakistan’s external debt in just three years, adding 35.1 billion US dollars to take the total figure to an astonishing 85.6 billion US dollars. The report issued by the Ministry of Economic Affairs stated that new debt was added “to mitigate the pressure on the current account deficit, strengthen foreign exchange reserves, enhance external debt servicing capacity and provide requisite financing to water sector development”, as per The Express Tribune. His government is also poised to raise taxes, including a gradual monthly hike in levies on petrol prices, as a pre-condition to resume its $6 billion bailout program with the International Monetary Fund. Analysts say the fund wants Pakistan to further reduce the budget deficit, increase tariffs on electricity and petrol, as well as curb money laundering and corruption. The government in recent months has complied with most of the conditions of IMF, but doing so made Khan unpopular among people as inflation and the price of essential food soared. The Pakistani rupee has recently depreciated 30.5 percent against the US dollar in the last three years and four months under the current government of Khan. According to The News International, the value of the Pakistani rupee has fallen from Rs 123 against the US dollar in August 2018 to Rs 177 against the US dollar in December 2021, a decline of 30.5 percent over the last 40 months. This makes it one of the highest devaluations of the currency in the country’s history. At least 49 percent of Pakistani people believe that Prime Minister Imran Khan-led government is responsible for inflation in the country reported Geo News. According to a new survey by Ipsos, respondents stated that price hikes have impacted all classes in Pakistan, with the bottom-end socio-economic classes suffering the most due to it. The research conducted from 28 October to 4 November last year while interviewing over 1,000 respondents, revealed that half of the Pakistanis blame the federal government for inflation. Geo News reported that only 15 percent of the respondents said they blamed previous governments for it, a narrative the PTI and Prime Minister Imran Khan have been attempting to establish since day one in power. Forty-nine percent held the Centre responsible for the crisis, 17 percent considered provincial governments responsible while only 8 percent blamed an unknown mafia. Bloomberg reports that the prime minister’s party is currently trailing behind the country’s largest opposition group, led by former premier Nawaz Sharif, according to a survey of fund managers and other investors by the Karachi-based brokerage Insight Securities Ltd. About 46 percent of those polled expect Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz to form the next government. Only 31 percent expect Khan to secure a second term. With inputs from agencies