This file photo taken on January 26, 2022, shows the seal for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC. — AFP

As the country faces mass discord and violence in the aftermath of Khan’s arrest, we need to understand that Imran Khan is not the victim here. Pakistani democracy is. This crisis is of the former Prime Minister’s own making. Those who butcher democracy with their own very hands cannot be regarded as revolutionaries wielding flags of change. The very profiteers of authoritarianism cannot be deemed the champions of democracy.

Amid massive protests that saw tens of thousands of people on the streets this month over the proposed judicial reforms that aim to curb the independent Israeli Supreme Court’s power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to delay his contested plans. Not fully giving up, he reckoned that ‘an extremist minority’ was carrying out the protests and paralyzing the country. Recent political showdown shows otherwise.

This is a rather chaotic week for South Asian politics. Only on Friday was India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi expelled from parliament over a defamation case. Gandhi’s supposed crime was that about two years earlier he had implied that the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a ‘thief.’ Gandhi has received a two-year sentence, implying that he can no longer serve in the Lok Sabha. This rather fast ruling shows how adamant Modi has been to silence opposition and weaken democracy. Was it necessary?

As countries around the globe celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8th, Pakistani women and transgender people confronted baton charging police officers and protesting men from conservative groups amid attempts by them to stop the ‘contentious” and ‘immoral’ Aurat March—a grassroots movement led by women, for women, to celebrate womanhood and protest the systematic societal discrimination and patriarchal norms and prejudices that women encounter every day in the country.

Whenever I walk past the confines of Lincoln’s Inn, the most prestigious Inn to have housed many political geniuses and ardent barristers of the caliber of Muhammad Iqbal, Tony Blair and Z.A. Bhutto, no one comes to my mind more than the founding father of my country—Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who 75 years ago, was eons ahead of his time.

Yet, today’s Pakistan is so far beyond his vision; it is marred by fundamentalism, authoritarianism and political patronage, a state where rule of law is subservient to the will of the ruling elite, where intolerance reigns and today, a state that might or might not be defaulting on its sovereign debt.

The picture sourced from Reuters and Abdul Majeed/AFP via Getty Images shows the damage in the wake of floods after heavy monsoon rains in Charsadda district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

This picture sourced from Reuters shows the Secretary-General of the UN Antonio Guterres, and others attend COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The picture sourced from NPR and Carl de Souza/AFP via Getty Images shows Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva holding a Brazilian flag on the day of the presidential runoff election.