At the root of it is a simple question. Will a bruised House - aka the Army led by General Asim Munir-succeed in engineering a political outcome it wants by keeping Imran Khan's loyalists out of the governance structure? Or will the voice of the electorate whose preferences for a ruling arrangement that has a strong role for those loyal to the Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-iInsaf (PTI) be accommodated, even if it is unpalatable to the establishment?
To be sure, the final results aren't in. But conversations with a set of experts on Pakistan America-based academics, a former Pakistani official, and former Indian officials -indicates that in what is clearly now a zeroPICE sum game between THE Khan and Munir, the latter will prevail. The question is the terms on which the army prevails, the nature of the political arrangement it can engineer, the extent to which it will go in shaping this outcome, and the risks that come with excluding a popular political force out of the power structure?
It doesn't help that the political crisis has come at possibly the worst time for Pakistan. It needs another International Monetary Fund (IMF) package to overcome its dismal economic situation in just a few months. It continues to face an adverse security climate, largely due to the activities of the Tehreek-eTaliban-e-Pakistan, also called the Pakistani Taliban, comfortably ensconced in Afghanistan.
And it is in the middle of a careful foreign policy balancing act where it is seeking to mend ties with the US, which isn't keen on Khan either but wants to be true to its stated preference for credible elections, keep up its engagement with China and maintain relative status quo with India.
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