This New Government Has an Immediate Legitimacy Crisis

Pakistan's general election was supposed to provide a path out of political chaos. Instead, it has produced a result so fractured and contradictory that it feels like a political riddle. The candidates backed by the jailed, wildly popular former Prime Minister Imran Khan won the most seats. And yet, they will not form the next government.

That task will fall to the very legacy parties that the voters seemed to reject. It's an outcome that makes a mockery of the democratic process and sets the stage for a new and dangerous crisis of legitimacy.

This was an election conducted under a dark cloud. Imran Khan, a charismatic cricket star turned populist firebrand, was in jail on a raft of charges that his supporters say are politically motivated. His party, the PTI, was systematically dismantled by the powerful military establishment. It was barred from the ballot, its leaders were arrested, and its symbol—the cricket bat—was banned. The deck was stacked, very publicly, in favor of the military's preferred party, the PML-N of the Sharif dynasty.

But then the people voted. In a stunning act of defiance, millions turned out for independent candidates who were, in reality, PTI proxies. Using social media and word of mouth, they defied the crackdown and gave Imran Khan a massive moral victory from his jail cell.

The problem is, a moral victory doesn't get you a majority in parliament.

And so, the absurd political theater began. The two parties that came in second and third, the PML-N and the PPP, historical rivals who have spent decades accusing each other of corruption, have now cobbled together a "coalition of the unwilling." It is a marriage of convenience designed for one purpose: to keep Imran Khan and his movement out of power.

This new government is being born with zero popular mandate. It will be seen by millions of people not as a reflection of their will, but as a backroom deal brokered by the military to preserve a broken status quo. The election itself was a mess, marred by a nationwide mobile internet shutdown on polling day and widespread, credible allegations of vote-rigging. The new administration will be haunted from day one by the charge that it is illegitimate, that the election was stolen.

And this weak, unpopular government has to tackle a set of almost impossible challenges. The economy is on life support, surviving on an IMF bailout that will require painful austerity measures. A resurgent Pakistani Taliban is carrying out deadly attacks on a near-daily basis.

You have a government with no legitimacy trying to impose unpopular economic policies on a population that is already angry and feels cheated. It’s a recipe for profound instability.

The 2024 election has solved nothing. It has only exposed the deep, unbridgeable fault lines in Pakistani society: the chasm between a hugely popular populist movement and a powerful, unaccountable military establishment. The vote nobody won has produced a government that almost nobody wants.