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Good morning. The stunning success of Imran Khan in Pakistan’s election has dealt a historic blow to the military’s political influence and threatens further instability as rival parties vie for control.
With the former prime minister in jail and many of his candidates in hiding, Pakistan’s election was expected to snuff out the populist’s bid for power in the country of 240mn.
But observers said the emergence of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as the largest party on Thursday represented a rare repudiation of the powerful army’s long-running manipulation of elections in Pakistan, with voters recoiling at the increasingly overt attempts to crush his party and prevent him from returning to office.
Independent candidates affiliated with PTI — which was formally barred from running — stormed to victory, winning 101 of 265 seats. The party claimed to have evidence of widespread vote-rigging that robbed it of winning about 70 further seats, with the counting process marred by delays, a mobile network blackout and other alleged irregularities.
PTI voters “were joined by many voting [with] their conscience on the question of the military’s interference in politics. That includes a much broader coalition,” said Azeema Cheema, a director at Verso Consulting in Islamabad.
Yet even if the outcome leads to a longer-term reckoning over the army’s hold over politics, the ensuing power vacuum will leave the crisis-stricken country even less governable as it approaches a crucial deadline for a new IMF bailout. Our reporters in Pakistan take deeper look at the surprise election results and what comes next for the country.
Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:
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Economic data: India releases consumer price index figures for January. Economists polled by Reuters expect to see that India’s inflation continued to cool last month.
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US-Middle East diplomacy: President Joe Biden hosts Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House for talks on resolving the Israel-Hamas war.
Five more top stories
1. Tech companies have axed 34,000 jobs this year as they rejig their workforces to invest in new areas such as generative artificial intelligence to power their next phase of growth. Microsoft, Snap, eBay and PayPal have each scrapped hundreds or thousands of roles since the start of January, according to the website Layoffs.fyi, and a total of 138 tech companies have laid off staff this year.
2. Donald Trump said he had warned Nato allies that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” if alliance members failed to meet defence spending targets, highlighting the risk to the military pact if he wins a new term in the White House. Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that the alliance remained “ready and able to defend all allies” in the face of military threats, while other members of the alliance criticised Trump’s comments.
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War in Ukraine: Russian forces are using Starlink terminals on the front line in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian military, which said the adoption of Elon Musk’s satellite internet service by Moscow’s troops was becoming “systemic”.
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More US 2024 election news: Far more Americans trust Donald Trump to handle the US economy than Joe Biden despite months of strong growth, a new FT-Michigan Ross poll has found.
3. US President Joe Biden has warned Israel that it needs a “credible” plan to protect civilians before moving ahead with a new military operation in southern Gaza near the border with Egypt. Biden issued the warning during a call yesterday with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, in the latest sign of unease in Washington with the conduct of the war against Hamas.
4. Former Finnish prime minister Alex Stubb will become the Nordic country’s next president after elections billed as the most consequential in decades for the country following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Stubb beat former foreign minister Pekka Haavisto by 52 per cent to 48 per cent yesterday evening, according to a preliminary tally with nearly all votes counted. Here’s more on the next Finnish president, including his views on China.
5. Exclusive: EY piled more than $700mn of extra debt on to its global operating business to deal with the costs of the failed plan to spin off its consulting arm, according to newly filed accounts. The figures detail the financial impact of Project Everest, which collapsed in April after infighting at the Big Four accounting firm.
News in-depth
Since Japan’s Aozora Bank revealed this month that exposure to the crisis-hit US office market would push it into an annual loss, analysts and investors have been scrambling to assess whether such dangers could be widespread in the Japanese financial sector. Out of all Asian lenders, “Japanese banks look the most vulnerable to US CRE [commercial real estate] risk”, a Citi analyst wrote — but there is some good news for investors.
We’re also reading . . .
Chart of the day
With consumer prices in China’s economy in deflation for the past four months, car prices are falling at their fastest rate in at least 22 years. But despite discounts on everything from cosmetics to electrical goods, China’s consumers are tightening their belts as gloom persists about the world’s second-largest economy.
Take a break from the news
With hologram second acts, high-tech sound and light shows, and the mushrooming of mega-arenas, pop performance is entering a whole new era. But FT pop critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney asks, does it still count as live?
