 The political turmoil in Pakistan following the ousting of former Prime Minister Imran Khan has further escalated. Major protests by the opposition culminated on May 25th in a violent clash with security forces. The security forces violently suppressed a rally by supporters of Imran Khan who were demanding fresh elections. The Shahbaz Sharif-led government has also been conducting mass raids and arrests. At least 1,700 people were arrested and houses of 4,500 protesters were raided around the time of the march. According to media reports, eight people were killed in the clashes including five protesters and three policemen. Shahbaz Sharif came to power in April after Imran Khan was overthrown by a united opposition in a no-confidence motion. The opposition was allegedly backed by the powerful military establishment which is closely associated with the US. Since then Imran Khan has been demanding the announcement of fresh elections and his party has been conducting protests across the country. He has managed to mobilize his supporters in large numbers by claiming a conspiracy against him and blaming the United States. In Pakistan Imran Khan is trying to recreate the situation in 2014 when his party and he protested for over 124 days in Islamabad. And that really changed the fortunes of the PTI making it the strongest and largest party in the country. At the moment what he's hoping for is to force the government to call an early election to announce the date of the election as soon as possible. Now the prices of petrol have gone up by rupees 30. The price of diesel has gone up by rupees 46. I believe in the price of electricity will go up by rupees 5 per unit and that means that the cost of living is going to rise dramatically. Inflation was already galloping at 13.5% and bankers are estimating that it might go up to 15 to 18%. Others are estimating that it could go even higher. Now as the inflation continues to increase although Pakistan on the one hand has avoided the default on its foreign obligations etc. But it has shifted the entire burden onto the population of Pakistan through this hike in prices and rising cost of living. To prevent discontent from erupting in the streets of Pakistan, the government has also announced a sort of package for people whose salary is below 40,000 rupees that they may be able to purchase wheat and bread and other things much cheaper than the rest of the population. And that's a pretty massive package no doubt. But I think with the rise in general prices that may still be very, very hard to implement given that price discrimination in any case is very difficult to implement in a market economy. Nonetheless they're trying for that. Now the situation of course is that the population within Pakistan is saying well if you didn't have a solution to the rising cost of living. And if you didn't have a solution to the economic crisis of the PTI government and the cost of living continues to rise as before, then why did you destabilize the government? Why did you seem to have no plan and yet you were ready to desit and destabilize the government. So people will get more and more angry. I think right now the prices have just been raised on May 27th so it hasn't fully hit the consumer yet. But in a month's time, two weeks' time, three weeks' time I think it will be and it will be very obvious the results of this will be very, very detrimental to people's incomes. And I think that may propel people to join Imran Khan and his rallies against the present government. On May 25th following the violence in Islamabad, Imran Khan gave the authorities an ultimatum of six days to dissolve the National Assembly and announce dates for fresh elections. Khan said he would march back to Islamabad with millions if the government did not agree to his demands. On June 1st, Imran Khan warned in an interview that the country would move towards civil war if elections were not announced. Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the statement and accused Imran Khan of talking about the division of the country. Now the one major difference between the past and the present when Imran Khan was campaigning in the past is that the army and the establishment as a whole does not seem to be backing Imran Khan in any real way. In fact, when he tried to march to Islamabad, it is believed that the army helped the government. The government called in the armed forces to help the government in order to ensure that peace would not be disturbed in Islamabad. And so they placed barriers and so on and did the government as a whole, the state machinery as a whole came into operation and did their absolute best to ensure that the march would be minimized and that it would not be a successful march. Now that Imran Khan called that Dharna to a close much earlier than people expected, both for the reason that I think maybe he felt that he couldn't get enough momentum. And also the reason he gave himself is that some of his supporters were carrying arms and he called it off in order to avoid bloodshed. Can he reorganize such a march as he threatened to do in six days time? Will it be stronger than before? I think six days a bit too short. But certainly if the cost of being continues to rise in the way that it is rising at the moment, then that will definitely mean that Imran Khan will receive quite a bit of more support from wider sections of society because people will feel that the economic crisis was not solved by the present government.