Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison and arrested after a court convicted him in a case concerning state gifts received while he was prime minister. The case centres on allegations that Khan improperly declared proceeds connected to gifts from the Toshakhana, the state repository through which officials handle gifts received from foreign dignitaries. Khan denies wrongdoing and says the prosecution is part of a political campaign designed to prevent him from returning to power. His opponents argue that popularity cannot place a former prime minister above ordinary accountability. The conviction could also affect his ability to contest the next general election, giving the legal judgement enormous political consequences.
There is an easy argument available to both sides. Khan’s supporters can declare every prosecution politically motivated because the state establishment wants him removed. His opponents can say a court has convicted him and therefore the matter is simply rule of law. Neither position is sufficient. A democracy needs to be capable of prosecuting powerful politicians when evidence establishes wrongdoing, because allowing electoral popularity to create legal immunity would turn political office into protection from accountability. It also needs legal institutions sufficiently independent that prosecution does not become another instrument through which political competition is conducted.
Pakistan’s history makes the second requirement particularly difficult. Civilian leaders have repeatedly entered office with enormous popular mandates only to leave through military intervention, judicial proceedings, disqualification, resignation or political pressure. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was removed in a military coup in 1977 and later executed after a controversial trial. His daughter Benazir Bhutto was twice removed from office and spent years facing corruption allegations. Nawaz Sharif was overthrown by General Pervez Musharraf in 1999, later returned to government and was eventually disqualified from office by the Supreme Court in 2017 before leaving the country. Khan himself became prime minister in 2018 and was removed through a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022. Pakistan’s political history therefore gives citizens strong reasons to interpret legal proceedings through the larger distribution of political power.
This does not establish that Khan is innocent. Historical patterns are context, not evidence about an individual charge. A politician can be prosecuted selectively and still have committed the offence alleged. This distinction is essential because selective enforcement and factual guilt can coexist. If ten politicians commit similar violations and the state prosecutes only the one who threatens powerful institutions, the prosecution does not become factually false merely because it is selective. It becomes institutionally problematic because law is being applied according to political incentives rather than a consistent rule.
That is what makes selective accountability so corrosive. Citizens begin evaluating prosecutions according to who benefits rather than what evidence exists. If Khan is charged, his supporters assume the military establishment is responsible. If Nawaz Sharif is prosecuted, his supporters assume political engineering. Courts can issue technically detailed judgements, but the informational value of those judgements declines because every legal outcome is interpreted through prior political loyalties. Eventually even legitimate prosecutions become difficult to distinguish from political ones.
This is a credibility problem. Courts, prosecutors and electoral authorities possess power partly because citizens accept their decisions even when they dislike the outcome. That acceptance depends on expectations of procedural consistency. Once enough citizens believe institutions apply different standards to different political actors, every decision becomes another partisan event. The institution may retain legal authority while losing part of the social legitimacy required to make its rulings politically authoritative.
Pakistan’s military sits at the centre of this problem because it has exercised enormous influence over national politics throughout the country’s history. Pakistan has experienced several periods of direct military rule, but formal civilian government has not necessarily meant the military became politically irrelevant. The armed forces have retained substantial influence over security policy, foreign affairs and the wider distribution of political power. This creates an unusual political system in which elections matter substantially while elected governments operate alongside an unelected institution possessing enough independent capacity to shape the political environment.
Khan’s own relationship with that establishment makes the current crisis particularly complicated. His critics have long argued that his rise to power in 2018 benefited from an establishment hostile to Nawaz Sharif and willing to weaken Khan’s political opponents. Khan and the military later fell out, particularly during the final period of his government and after his removal. A politician once accused of benefiting from an uneven political system now presents himself as its principal victim. That does not invalidate his current complaints. It demonstrates the danger of accepting institutional manipulation when it disadvantages one’s opponents and objecting only when the same mechanisms turn against oneself.
Good constitutional rules should survive the veil-of-ignorance test. A politician should support judicial independence when courts investigate allies as well as enemies. A party should support electoral fairness whether it expects to win or lose. A government should oppose military interference even when that interference weakens its principal rival. Pakistan’s political class has repeatedly struggled with this because short-term advantages from establishment support can appear more valuable than the long-term benefit of neutral institutions.
This creates a repeated-game problem. Suppose one party believes the military will intervene in politics regardless of what civilians want. Refusing establishment support then appears strategically naive because another party may accept it and gain an advantage. Each political organisation therefore has incentives to cooperate with unelected power when cooperation benefits it, even though collectively the parties would be better off under a system where none could use that power against the others. Individually rational political strategies produce collectively weak civilian institutions.
Breaking that equilibrium requires major parties to accept something they often find difficult: an opponent winning fairly is preferable to oneself winning through institutions that can later be turned against everyone. That principle is easy to endorse while in opposition and harder while governing. Yet democratic consolidation depends on political actors repeatedly choosing institutional neutrality over immediate partisan advantage.
Khan’s extraordinary popularity makes the problem more dangerous because legal exclusion can create a gap between electoral demand and political supply. Large numbers of Pakistanis want to vote for Khan or candidates associated with his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. If legal decisions prevent the politician they prefer from competing, those citizens need strong reasons to believe the exclusion follows neutral law rather than an attempt to predetermine the election. Otherwise elections can remain formally competitive while significant parts of the electorate conclude that the most important choice was removed before voting began.
This is why electoral integrity begins before election day. A perfectly counted ballot does not create full democratic legitimacy if candidate eligibility, party organisation, media access or legal enforcement has been manipulated beforehand. Turkey demonstrated the same distinction in May: meaningful voting can coexist with an uneven competitive environment. The relevant democratic question is not merely whether citizens can place a mark on a ballot but whether viable political alternatives can reach that ballot under reasonably neutral rules.
None of this means Khan should be allowed to contest elections regardless of criminal conduct. That would create the opposite moral hazard. Politicians could transform popularity into immunity by claiming every prosecution threatens democracy. Leaders facing legitimate corruption charges would have incentives to mobilise supporters against courts and describe accountability as persecution. Donald Trump has demonstrated versions of this strategy in the United States, while leaders across many countries portray legal scrutiny as evidence that hidden elites fear the electorate.
The correct standard therefore cannot depend on popularity. It must depend on evidence, procedure and consistency. Was the alleged conduct illegal under a reasonably clear rule? Is the evidence sufficient? Did Khan receive meaningful opportunity to defend himself? Are comparable cases handled similarly? Can he appeal through an independent judiciary? Those questions are less emotionally satisfying than deciding immediately whether Khan is hero or criminal, but they are how rule of law distinguishes itself from political judgement.
Pakistan’s broader political crisis makes neutral adjudication harder because the country is simultaneously experiencing severe economic pressure. Inflation has remained extremely high, foreign-exchange constraints have weakened economic activity, and Pakistan secured an IMF financing arrangement only after difficult negotiations. Ordinary households therefore experience political instability alongside rising prices and economic uncertainty. When governments appear unable to provide prosperity or political predictability, anti-establishment narratives become more persuasive.
Khan has been exceptionally effective at converting that dissatisfaction into a political argument about sovereignty and elite power. He presents himself as confronting a political establishment containing traditional parties, sections of the bureaucracy and military leadership. Whether every element of that narrative is accurate matters less politically than the fact that millions of citizens find it plausible. Populism succeeds when a leader can compress several different grievances into one conflict between “the people” and “the establishment”.
That framing is powerful but dangerous. Pakistan clearly contains institutions whose political influence deserves scrutiny, particularly the military. Yet “the people” are not a single political constituency. Millions of Pakistanis oppose Khan. Their preferences are equally democratic. Once a politician begins claiming exclusive ownership of popular legitimacy, institutional constraints can be reinterpreted automatically as conspiracies against the people because disagreement with the leader becomes disagreement with the electorate itself.
This is why Pakistan needs stronger institutions rather than another indispensable leader. Khan’s supporters may reasonably believe he is more capable or less corrupt than his rivals. Nawaz Sharif’s supporters may believe the opposite. Democracy does not require resolving that disagreement objectively before allowing politics to continue. It requires institutions neutral enough that citizens can decide through elections and change their minds later.
Political leaders should therefore be replaceable without becoming destroyable. Losing office should not normally mean imprisonment, exile or political elimination. Winning office should not provide immunity from prosecution. Opposition should remain a legitimate temporary condition rather than a stage before the state removes you from politics. Countries where political defeat threatens personal survival give leaders powerful incentives to avoid defeat by any means available.
This is one reason Pakistan’s cycles of political confrontation become so intense. The stakes of losing are unusually high. If leaving office can mean prosecution, disqualification or exile, incumbents have stronger incentives to control appointments and institutions while they possess power. Opposition leaders simultaneously have stronger incentives to mobilise against the entire system rather than wait patiently for another election.
Making political defeat survivable is therefore an institutional reform in itself. Courts need independence, military leadership needs political neutrality, parties need internal democracy and electoral rules need enough credibility that politicians expect future opportunities to return to power. When actors believe another fair election is coming, compromise becomes cheaper because today’s loss is temporary.
Pakistan has repeatedly failed to establish that expectation securely. Every major political movement has memories of being removed or persecuted, and almost every major movement has at some point benefited when institutions weakened its opponents. Historical grievance then becomes justification for repeating the behaviour.
That cycle produces institutional revenge rather than institutional reform.
The military can justify intervention by pointing towards civilian corruption and incompetence. Civilian politicians can justify manipulating institutions because they fear military intervention. Courts can become arenas in which political conflicts that should be resolved electorally are converted into legal questions. Each institution then claims it is responding to the failures of another.
The cumulative result is diluted accountability. When the economy performs badly, governments can blame the military or previous administrations. When security fails, civilians can argue that they never controlled security policy fully. When political engineering occurs, responsibility becomes difficult to prove because formal constitutional authority and practical influence are distributed differently.
A functioning democracy needs clearer lines of responsibility. Citizens should know who governs so they can decide whom to remove.
Pakistan’s hybrid distribution of power complicates that mechanism. The military can possess influence without formal electoral accountability, while civilian governments can possess formal authority without complete control over important policy areas. This creates the worst possible combination if taken too far: power without accountability for one institution and accountability without full power for another.
Khan’s imprisonment therefore matters beyond his personal future. If Pakistan’s next election occurs with one of the country’s most popular political figures excluded under circumstances a substantial part of the electorate considers politically motivated, the eventual government may possess constitutional authority while beginning with a serious legitimacy deficit.
That does not mean the election should wait until Khan is legally cleared. It means institutions need to make the process unusually transparent and consistent because trust is already scarce.
Pakistan’s political establishment also needs to recognise that removing a politician does not remove the constituency supporting them. Khan’s appeal reflects dissatisfaction among younger, urban and middle-class voters as well as broader anti-establishment sentiment. Even if he disappears from the ballot, those preferences remain.
Suppressing political representation can therefore convert ordinary electoral frustration into systemic frustration.
A voter whose candidate loses can wait for the next election.
A voter who believes their candidate was never allowed to compete begins questioning whether elections are meaningful at all.
That is a much more dangerous political belief.
Pakistan therefore faces a choice larger than Imran Khan. It can continue a political tradition in which institutions repeatedly determine which leaders are permitted to compete and which are removed, with each party supporting the system whenever it benefits and condemning it whenever it suffers. Or political actors can begin constructing a system where accountability becomes sufficiently consistent that a conviction carries evidentiary meaning rather than immediately becoming another episode in partisan struggle.
The first path can produce short-term winners.
It has not produced institutional stability.
The second requires politicians to accept courts they cannot control, elections they may lose and opponents they may dislike.
That is much harder.
It is also what democratic politics is supposed to institutionalise.
Imran Khan should not be above the law because millions of people support him.
He should not be below it because powerful institutions oppose him either.
The legitimacy of Pakistan’s next political chapter depends on whether citizens can still believe there is a meaningful difference between those two possibilities.
