 Pakistan is facing a fresh political crisis. On the one hand, the government has been trying to get former Prime Minister Imran Khan to appear in court in a corruption case. Imran, however, has refused to do so and his supporters and the police have repeatedly clashed. The Pakistani parliament has been called into session on March 22, presumably to discuss this issue. What is the agenda of the Pakistani government and why is it out to crackdown on Imran Khan? Taimur Rahman, General Secretary of the Mazdoor-Kisan Party of Pakistan, explains. I believe that the government wants to get a conviction from Imran Khan, of Imran Khan, so that they can then use that conviction in the coming election and say, look, Imran Khan is corrupt and all his promises were fake and so on, because government is strongly losing favour with the public because of the incredibly high rates of inflation. So they need a smoking gun with which they can then attack Imran Khan. So that was going to be the Toshakhana case. The Toshakhana is a department where elected officials and senior members of the government get a gift from anyone. You're supposed to submit that gift to the Toshakhana and you can use that while in office, et cetera, but it's not your private property because you've gotten that gift as a virtue or because of your connection with that particular office. So in fact, politicians can then take that gift and then buy that gift from the Toshakhana, you know, from the department, et cetera, and they can pay a small price for that. But most politicians, what they do is they take the thing and they don't pay the actual market value or what is required. And that's the case against Imran Khan as well, that he got watches, et cetera, and other gifts from various heads of state including Saudi Arabia and that one particular watch was sold on the market and the full price of that watch was not given to the government or the required price of that government was not paid to the government. And so that was the case against Imran Khan. Imran Khan, as you know, was shot, there was an assassination attempt against him and there were several bullets in his legs. So during that period, he got a bit of respite from the High Court that he could not appear in front of the High Court. But now that he has recovered, the High Court has been saying that you have to appear for the case, et cetera, et cetera. And he hasn't been appearing. And so then the order to arrest him was issued by the High Court with Vizavi Toshakhana case. So that's what's going on. But the real politics behind it all is basically that they want to get a conviction against Imran Khan so that they can use that in the coming election as a campaign slogan or something. Imran Khan has emerged as a powerful political force ever since his overthrow in 2022. He initially painted himself as a victim of a plot between the security forces, the political establishment and the U.S. He has also been able to successfully mobilize his supporters in large numbers. What is Imran Khan's current strategy? Well on the one hand he has been holding out a carrot and he's tried to de-escalate some of these more radical rhetoric against the army, which was the case in the early period when his government was dismissed that he hit out very directly against the army. And he hit out against America as well. In both these instances I think he's come to realize that he has to somehow or the other tone down the rhetoric as far as America is concerned, as far as the army is concerned. So Vizavi America, his first sort of backtracking on what he had said earlier was the why I don't blame the Americans at all for what happened to me. It's our own people's fault, et cetera, et cetera. And with respect to the army as well now, he's been saying for quite a while that I'm ready to talk, but the army is not ready to talk with me, et cetera, et cetera. So he's sort of tried to focus his fire more squarely only on the political opposition. And the earlier statements he made against the United States of America and against the Pakistani army, he's sort of withdrawn from those. But it's not so far it's not really working because obviously a lot of water has passed under the bridge. And so the army is not warming up to him at any significant level. His recent strategy after, well his earlier strategy was when he was displaced from government that he was going to build public pressure. And after the assassination, obviously he had to take some rest and he couldn't continue that pressure. The party could not continue that pressure without Imran Khan, who is their main pole of attraction. So he took a bit of a respite and now it seems that he has been pushing once again that the public comes out and that there should be rallies, et cetera, et cetera. So recently announced a rally in Lahore in Minto Park. And it seems that that has caused the state also to become a little more aggressive because he seems to be once again stepping into the field. And he's saying, well, I'm going to conduct these rallies and I'm going to appear whether by video or in person, et cetera. But he's once again pushing up the temperature, which is why there's a pushback against him as well. In the midst of this political chaos, the Pakistani economy continues to be in dire straits. The current government has completely failed to control the crisis and the IMF intervention has made it worse. What is the economic outlook for Pakistan? The government has entirely failed to curb inflation. In fact, before the government came into power, one of the principal campaigns slogans against Imran Khan was that look at the amount of inflation he's caused. Mangai Mukau, they did a march, et cetera. They tried to do a march, et cetera. They tried to make that their principal campaign slogan. And that has backfired very, very badly because after taking power, they have not been able to control inflation. In fact, inflation is at a 48-year high in Pakistan's existence. In the last 50 years, Pakistan has not experienced this level of inflation. So, and inflation is so high that government has had to raise interest rates, you know, the state bank of Pakistan has had to raise the interest rate to 20%, which is the highest I think it's ever been. And as a consequence, of course, with such high rates of interest, there isn't going to be much growth in the economy. That is all going to slow down. There's widespread unemployment, widespread inflation, and zero growth. So that is a terrible situation for Pakistan to be in. Economically speaking, if this was the main sort of, if this was the main campaign slogan that they had, was that we're going to fix the economy that Imran Khan broke. Well, you know, so far the results have not been delivered to the public. Now, you may make the argument that, in fact, Imran Khan had wrecked the economy so terribly that it's going to take all of this stuff to, and it's going to take a hard sort of painful process for us to get back on track. But I think the public is not going to buy that. The public really did want immediate relief. And I think for that reason, if there's an election held, Imran Khan will be able to perhaps even gain more votes than he did when he formed his government earlier. And that, I think, is something that obviously the government at the time, the PDM government at this time, doesn't want. And the army also doesn't want because that's going to put them in contradiction with the elected government. So now there's lots of rumors that Pakistan may decide to go for a, you know, technocratic form of government. There is even a rumor that Mifti Ismail and Shahid Khakan Abassi and other technocrats may be brought in. Well, these are also politicians, but a technocratic government may be formed to try and maneuver through the IMF conditionalities. It is principally because of the IMF that we are experiencing this level of inflation because we are part of a program with the IMF. And the IMF has said that to continue receiving assistance, to continue to receive assistance from the International Monetary Fund to the TUNA $1.2 billion, we have to increase the prices of diesel and petrol and gas, et cetera. And that, of course, increases the prices of electricity and so on. And that, of course, leads to a general cost push inflation all across the economy. So these are things that have been imposed by the IMF. In addition, the IMF has told us why we have to raise taxes. So we've also raised taxes. So for all these reasons and more, the economy is right now in a complete mess. Of course, we are going to get the foreign exchange results from the IMF in exchange for all the inflation and unemployment that we have caused. And so international trade may continue. But what has happened to the domestic economy has been so terrible that I think the public will definitely vote out the PMLN in any coming election. And that's what they're really scared of. And that's why they need a conviction against Imran Khan. They need him to appear in court in order to get that conviction. They need him to cooperate with the court in order to get that conviction. And that's why Imran Khan is not cooperating. And that's why you see the standoff as you do in Zaman Park.