Why Pakistan’s unstable coalition won’t faze China, IMF: ‘everyone understands army is in charge’

“There are plenty of reasons to think this government won’t last long,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Centre, a Washington-based think tank.

There is friction between the two biggest partners in the incoming coalition – the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and ex-president Asif Ali Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

The new government would also be under intense pressure from jailed ex-leader Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, which backed independent candidates comprising the single largest grouping in the National Assembly.

Few Pakistani governments have served out their full terms and no prime minister ever has. Honeymoons have often given way to “ugly divorces” between the civilian and military leaderships, Kugelman noted.

Additionally, the new multiparty coalition will be “unwieldy and weak, and led by parties that don’t get along”.

“This could all doom it to failure,” he warned.

However, Kugelman said while Pakistan needed renewed, multi-year financial help from the IMF to prevent it from defaulting on its international debt and trade payments – like Sri Lanka did in 2022 – the prospects for a new deal “won’t be damaged by the election controversies” as long as the Washington-based lender “believes Islamabad is committed to seeing through economic reforms”.

During the new coalition’s first few weeks in power, the civilian and military leaderships are “likely to be of one mind in supporting reforms, though for political reasons, [it] may drag its feet and resist new austerity measures”.

For both political and economic reasons, the government and military will have a “strong incentive” to “ensure unrest over