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Of much more practical and immediate concern is the Pakistani military's long standing and increasingly deep technical cooperation with China. Khan has a large

Of much more practical and immediate concern is the Pakistani military's long standing and increasingly deep technical cooperation with China. Khan has a large populist support base but it's not exactly accurate to say he's wildly popular, a huge amount of people from Lahore and Punjab and the power base of elites supporting Nawaz Sharif and his friends are deeply opposed to him. They've spent lots of money on political opposition. And then there's all the Sindhi Bhutto and PPP supporters who don't like him either. He has maybe 45-50% support.

kamaal 4y ago
Speaking as an Indian, Sub continent politics is totally messed up. India realised in the immediate events after Independence. Democracy won't survive if feudalism exists along side. It wasn't even that much of a difficult thing to understand, if you are a bonded labor under a feudal you pretty much do what the feudal says, and given the overall socio-economic situation of such places feudals would win anyway(Only feudals have the influence and money to even fight the elections). Though India abolished absentee landlordism, feudalism nevertheless continues. And even till date significant politics of India runs through political dynasties(former and current feudals). Add to this religion, every few years there is some popular majoritarian religious trend, often loaded with settling scores with the minorities for some imagined victimhood, some battle some king who belonged to your religion lost 800 years back, these are 'pride' related emotional issues on which masses vote. No one cares about education, or improving general standard of living. Add to this caste, regional and linguistic reasons. Democracy is mostly a sham even without fixing, because masses don't vote for their own good. To think of democracy in the sub continent, people vote to hurt others than to help themselves. A vote is mostly a downvote in many ways.

kamaal 4y ago

Speaking as an Indian, Sub continent politics is totally messed up. India realised in the immediate events after Independence. Democracy won't survive if feudalism exists along side. It wasn't even that much of a difficult thing to understand, if you are a bonded labor under a feudal you pretty much do what the feudal says, and given the overall socio-economic situation of such places feudals would win anyway(Only feudals have the influence and money to even fight the elections). Though India abolished absentee landlordism, feudalism nevertheless continues. And even till date significant politics of India runs through political dynasties(former and current feudals). Add to this religion, every few years there is some popular majoritarian religious trend, often loaded with settling scores with the minorities for some imagined victimhood, some battle some king who belonged to your religion lost 800 years back, these are 'pride' related emotional issues on which masses vote. No one cares about education, or improving general standard of living. Add to this caste, regional and linguistic reasons. Democracy is mostly a sham even without fixing, because masses don't vote for their own good. To think of democracy in the sub continent, people vote to hurt others than to help themselves. A vote is mostly a downvote in many ways.