Pakistan’s Imran Khan Puts Up Fierce Fight to Stay in Power

As a sportsman, Imran Khan led an underdog Pakistan team to victory at cricket’s World Cup. Now he is drawing on that competitive spirit as he tries to come from behind to win a vote that will determine his fate as prime minister.

Mr. Khan faces a no-confidence vote in parliament, which is expected to take place by April 4 and will decide whether he stays in office.

The numbers are heavily stacked against the 69-year-old leader’s thin majority in parliament. At least a dozen lawmakers from his own party have said they are deserting him, and other parties in his ruling coalition have signaled they are ready to switch sides. And Pakistan’s powerful military, which aided his rise to power, has turned cold on him.

He showed he retained a big and passionate base Sunday, as tens of thousands responded to his call and streamed to a rally in Islamabad, coming in buses, cars, motorbikes and on foot, waving the green and red flag of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

Kaushif Sheikh came by road with a group of other supporters from the other end of the country, the port city of Karachi, a distance of 900 miles.

“I’m not standing here for Khan. He stands for me. That’s why I’m here,” Mr. Sheikh said. “We will be with Khan in government or opposition.”

A lengthy speech from Mr. Khan climaxed with the allegation that there is a foreign conspiracy behind the attempt to take down his government, due to his independent foreign policy. He said foreign powers were funding the opposition.

He produced a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket, which he said contained a threat written to Pakistan. He waved the letter before the crowd, but he didn’t show its contents or read it out.

Nor did he say which country was involved, though he indicated it involved the West as he mentioned London, where his main opponent, three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, lives in exile. Even news anchors on sympathetic channels were left guessing what it was all about.

Mr. Khan’s politics have gone in an increasingly anti-Western direction, which, according to his aides, is one of the sources of his tension with the military.

“We won’t accept being slaves of anyone,” Mr. Khan said. “Pakistani people have to decide whether they will allow conspirators to succeed with foreign money.”

Mr. Khan has taken the country into closer alignment with China and, more recently, Russia. When the Taliban overthrew the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, he said that Afghanistan had “broken the shackles of slavery.” He visited President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine last month. The military, dependent on American equipment from decades of alliance with Washington, doesn’t want to alienate the U.S. and other Western powers.

An aide said that blaming the West works well with core supporters. Many in the crowd at the rally said they believed that Mr. Khan was being punished for not cooperating with Western powers. But some had other ideas.

“It looks like the military establishment is tilting. We have come here with a message for General Bajwa: look at this crowd and see who Pakistan’s public is standing behind,” said Babar Aziz Chaudhury, a 49-year-old who works in a logistics business, referring to the country’s army chief.

Mr. Khan is challenging the vote against him in the courts, arguing that lawmakers aren’t allowed to turn on their party. He is also trying to persuade opposition lawmakers to come over to his side. Mr. Khan is also attempting to mend fences with the military, aides say. He could call for early elections.

“It was a speech not just of a defeated man, but of a mentally sick man,” said Marriyum Aurangzeb, a spokeswoman for Mr. Sharif’s party.

Mr. Khan was a charismatic hero for Pakistanis on the cricket pitch, but he has proved deeply polarizing as a politician. His politics have become progressively more cloaked in his religious beliefs. He says his aim is to establish an Islamic welfare state, casting his opponents as not only crooked but devilish, saying, “God tells Muslims to stand up for goodness and go against evil.” His third—and current—marriage was to his spiritual guide.

Mr. Khan’s base appears intact, but swing voters have moved toward Mr. Sharif, who was 19 points ahead in popularity in a poll conducted in January by Gallup Pakistan.

The biggest issue for voters is inflation, the poll showed, which has plagued Mr. Khan’s tenure, driven by more-expensive imports as the rupee has plummeted. An official price index, published on March 24, of 51 essential items including food and fuel showed annual inflation running at 16%.

Foreign debt has ballooned, and the continuation of an International Monetary Fund bailout program is in doubt because the government adopted fuel subsidies and a tax amnesty before getting IMF approval.

Mr. Khan’s party says it should get credit for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which brought fewer deaths and less economic damage to Pakistan than neighboring India and many other countries. The government has bolstered cash handouts to the poor and allowed people to use private hospitals at government expense. It also says the economy is beginning to turn around.

As prime minister, Mr. Khan brought corruption cases against dozens of his opponents, though none of those charges resulted in a conviction. He calls them rats and refuses to shake hands with them. That aggressive style, and what detractors say is hypocrisy as he surrounds himself with many familiar faces in Pakistani politics while professing a new approach, mean that he is adored and reviled in equal measure.

Mr. Khan started playing for the national cricket team as a teenager, going on to be captain and one of its greatest-ever players. He is also a successful philanthropist, raising funds to establish a cancer hospital and a university.

But his path in politics, which followed his retirement from cricket, was much more difficult. He spent 22 years in the opposition as he attempted to break Pakistan’s two-party system as a self-styled Mr. Clean in one of the world’s most corrupt countries.

As the 2018 election approached, Mr. Khan was in his mid-60s and could see his chance at power slipping away, his aides say. At that point, he made two key compromises to get to power. First, he took in a number of politicians who had previously hopped from party to party—the kind he had railed against for years as being corrupt. Some of those politicians have now turned on him.

The second thing he did, opponents say, was deciding to cooperate with the military, which helped shore up his support in the crucial electoral battleground of Punjab province, home to half the country’s population. He and the military deny that they worked together to help him win.

The current challenge against him is possible only because the military has remained neutral, opposition lawmakers say, effectively abandoning Mr. Khan and freeing his supporters in parliament to jump ship. The military, which denies interfering in politics, has staged multiple coups and, even when not formally in power, it asserts a dominant role behind the scenes in policy-making.

Mr. Khan clashed with the armed forces over key appointments and the performance of his government. He is widely believed to retain support among the rank and file of the army, meaning the move against him isn’t without risk for the armed forces.

“We are closely following developments in Pakistan,” said a U.S. State Department spokeswoman. “We respect and support Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law.” President Biden hasn’t called Mr. Khan since taking office, which is seen as a snub in Pakistan.

Opposition politicians say they are pouncing now because they fear Mr. Khan could choose an army chief later this year who will again skew the election in his favor.

Pakistan has never had a prime minister complete a full five-year term. Mr. Khan’s is due to end in mid-2023. The tensions between Mr. Khan’s government and the military follow a pattern that has played out in Pakistani politics for decades.

“After a couple of years, a prime minister tries to assert his or her authority, a difference of opinion arises, and then it goes to a breaking point,” said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, president of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency, a think tank. “This is something we have seen with almost perfect regularity.”