Transcript: Pakistan’s Imran Khan fights an election from jail

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Pakistan’s Imran Khan fights an election from jail’

Marc Filippino
Good morning for the Financial Times. Today is Tuesday, February 6th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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China is getting closer to making competitive semiconductors. And an ex-prime minister in Pakistan is trying to sway this week’s election. Plus, could a new power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland pave the way for reunification? I’m Marc Filippino and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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It looks like China’s biggest chipmaker, SMIC, will start producing advanced smartphone processors for Huawei later this year. That’s a pretty big surprise because this is exactly what Washington did not want. The US has been trying hard to restrict China’s ability to make these chips. Huawei has shocked the industry lately with advances to its latest smartphone design. If SMIC does end up successfully producing these new chips, it would narrow the gap between China’s alternatives and the ones Nvidia is producing.

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It has been two years since Northern Ireland had a functioning government. But on Saturday, Stormont was back in business. Northern Ireland’s two main parties have finally agreed on how to share power and form a government. On the one hand, you have the unionists who support close ties to the UK and on the other, the nationalists who want to reunite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Here to talk to us about how the two parties came together is the FT’s Ireland correspondent, Jude Webber. Hi, Jude.

Jude Webber
Hi.

Marc Filippino
All right, so, Jude, before we get into this latest new government, walk me through exactly how Northern Ireland is governed, because I’m not gonna lie, it seems pretty complicated.

Jude Webber
Yeah, it’s quite unusual the way Northern Ireland is governed. So Northern Ireland had three decades of conflict, which ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement not only ends the conflict, it also establishes power-sharing as the mechanism by which the region is going to be governed. The two sides, if you like, in the conflict, agreed that they would share power together. So there’s a first minister. The first minister is now Michelle O’Neill, a nationalist. And there’s a deputy first minister. The deputy first minister today is Emma Little-Pengelly. She’s a unionist, but it’s the very first time that we’ve seen a nationalist hold the post. And the significance of that is almost impossible to overstate, because Northern Ireland was created to be a unionist state, and now unionists are no longer in the majority. And the first minister comes from a nationalist background.

Marc Filippino
OK, so if I understand this right, Northern Ireland is governed by a first minister and a second minister from different parties. And for the first time, the first minister is from a nationalist party, which means she supports reunifying Ireland. And I mean, Jude, it took a long time to form this government, and I guess I’m wondering why, you know, what was the process?

Jude Webber
So what happened back in February 2022 was that the DUP, the Democratic Unionist party, the biggest party that’s in favour of remaining in the UK, it was very unhappy with the trading arrangements under Brexit for Northern Ireland. And it pulled out its first minister and that triggered the collapse of the Stormont executive. So what we’ve seen is months and months and months of bilateral talks between the DUP and the British government to give the DUP a deal that the DUP will then, only a week ago, be able to take to its membership and say, will you back this? And then once they got the DUP membership behind it, they were able to go back to Stormont.

Marc Filippino
And what does this lack of an executive done to Northern Ireland’s economy?

Jude Webber
Well, it’s been very negative. So Northern Ireland is already one of the poorest parts of the United Kingdom, and it has the longest waiting lists in the health service across the whole of the UK. There’s a lot of funding problems in schools. And what’s happened is that without an executive to take charge and to prioritise and to assign funding, the budgets have been set by Westminster and they’ve been very restrictive. So it’s just been an accumulation of problems that means that the executive, now that it’s back, has a massive in-tray.

Marc Filippino
So, Jude, can this new government get the economy back on track? I mean, is there room to work here? What’s going on?

Jude Webber
There’s a lot of room to work on but there’s two things I would say. One is that there’s a financial package that comes from London that’s in the form of a £3.3bn package. So it’s a lot of money. But the second thing is that Northern Ireland, under the Brexit deal, has special access to the EU single market for goods. And it also has access, special access obviously to the UK internal market. So this makes it a very attractive investment location. I was talking to a trade consultant the other day who said there are a lot of people who’ve been very interested in investing in Northern Ireland, but they haven’t wanted to take the plunge because there’s been no government. Now the government’s back, the onus will be on the government to try to make sure that investment flows into the region and to really take advantage of this special, unique access.

Marc Filippino
So I want to go back to First Minister Michelle O’Neill, for a second. What kind of opportunity does she have here as a nationalist who, you know, is also interested in a united Ireland?

Jude Webber
OK, so straight out of the traps, as soon as she was installed as first minister, Michelle O’Neill was already saying that this is the decade of opportunity, let’s start preparing the ground for reuniting Ireland. But the tricky thing is, if the nationalists make Northern Ireland work too well, you know, its status as a part of the United Kingdom that has special access to the EU and is working very well, thank you very much, that might endanger [inaudible] goal of Irish reunification.

Marc Filippino
Jude Webber is the FT’s Ireland correspondent. Thanks, Jude.

Jude Webber
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
Pakistan will hold an election later this week and an ex-prime minister is playing a huge role in it. Imran Khan ran the country from 2018 until 2022, when he was ousted in a vote of no confidence. But he’s still the country’s most popular politician, and a comeback seemed pretty likely until he was imprisoned. Here to talk to me about is the FT’s Benjamin Parkin. Hey, Ben.

Benjamin Parkin
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Marc Filippino
So, Ben, get me up to speed here. How exactly did Imran Khan end up in prison?

Benjamin Parkin
So Imran Khan was first arrested in May of last year. This triggered massive protests around the country, some of which turned violent. He was then accused of having been involved in all sorts of conspiracies, including vandalism, terrorism. And since then, the legal problems have just piled up. Last week, only days before the elections, he was sentenced not once, but twice. First, he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for allegedly leaking state secrets while he was in office. And the next day, he was sentenced to 14 years in jail together with his wife on a corruption charge. But if you speak to any analyst, they will tell you that it’s very politically motivated.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, I was gonna ask. But since he’s in prison, what role can Imran Khan actually play in the upcoming election?

Benjamin Parkin
So it’s an interesting moment for his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Khan isn’t allowed to run for office, but a lot of people from his party still are. They are completely dependent on him as a personality. And so for him to be in jail, unable to meet with his supporters, unable to give speeches has been really difficult. But what they’ve done now, in one of the first examples in the world of this, Khan has started passing notes to his lawyers, who have then given them to his social media team who have turned them into AI-generated speeches in his voice.

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So Khan’s given a couple of these AI-generated speeches online to his supporters.

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Now it’s kind of typical Khan stuff, he’s denouncing what he says is the oppression of his party. And he’s urging them to kind of fight for what he says is Pakistan’s freedom, which is the kind of thing that has really resonated with his supporters.

Marc Filippino
Wow, so he’s passing along these notes from prison, which are then turned into AI speeches. I mean, that technology’s incredible. What are the odds, though, that they’re gonna work? Like, who is his party up against?

Benjamin Parkin
Well, the odds are massively stacked against his party. A lot of their leadership has quit, allegedly under pressure. They haven’t been allowed to use their election symbol, which is a really important way for voters to identify the party on election day. So it’s gonna be really, really difficult for them. So Khan is up against his arch nemesis, who is Nawaz Sharif, who has been prime minister of Pakistan three times before. He’s the ultimate kind of political veteran. He represents the old guard of Pakistani politics. He was himself convicted of corruption, banned from politics, went into exile only to return a few months ago in what very much has set him up to now retake power once again.

Marc Filippino
OK, so there are a lot of complicated moving pieces ahead of this election, which is just a few days away. Ben, what sort of precedent is this setting for Pakistan?

Benjamin Parkin
Well, Pakistan has, through its history, oscillated between democracy and dictatorship. And the role of the military has often interfered with civilian politics. No prime minister has ever completed their term. And so, unfortunately, that is set to continue. And so we could be looking at kind of more instability and more uncertainty ahead.

Marc Filippino
Ben Parkin covers south Asia for the FT. Thanks, Ben.

Benjamin Parkin
Thank you.

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Marc Filippino
You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.