Imran Khan's allies win the most seats in Pakistani elections

The myth of an all-powerful Army in Pakistan has been shattered before the public.

The first cracks began to appear two years ago, when thousands of Pakistanis demonstrated alongside a deposed Prime Minister who had resisted the Generals' tight control over politics. A year later, angry mobs broke into military installations and set them on fire.

Now comes another reprimand: Voters turned out in droves last month for candidates aligned with Imran Khan, the ousted leader, despite a military crackdown on his party. His supporters then returned to the streets to accuse the military of manipulating the results to deny Khan's allies a majority and allow the party favored by the Generals to form a government.

Political maneuvering and anxiety have left Pakistan, already reeling from an economic crisis, in a turbulent state. The military—long respected and feared as the top authority in this nuclear-powered country of 240 million—faces a crisis.

No one believes that the military, with its lucrative business interests and self-image as the backbone holding together a beleaguered democracy, will cede power. And even after this election, in which Khan's allies won the most seats in Parliament, the Generals' preferred candidate from another party will become Prime Minister.

But a large number of Pakistanis now see the military as a source of instability, analysts say.

“This is the biggest institutional crisis the military has ever faced in Pakistan,” said Adil Najam, a professor of international affairs at Boston University. “It's not just that their strategy has failed. “The military's ability to define Pakistan's policy is now in doubt.”

In the days after the election, the military's then-favored party, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, announced that it had formed a coalition with the country's third-largest party and others to lead the next government.

But with Khan-aligned candidates winning the most seats, he showed Pakistanis that there are limits to the military's power to engineer political outcomes. And whatever social legitimacy the military still had, analysts say, was eroded by widespread accusations of vote manipulation to reduce the margins of victory among Khan's allies.

For now, most expect the Generals to stay the course, hoping the hype will die down. But in the coming months they will need to rebuild public trust to stabilize the Country.

By: CHRISTINA GOLDBAUM
THE NEW YORK TIMES