Over the course of its four years in office, the embattled government of Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has weathered challenges from opposition parties both new and old, threats of military intervention or coup, and most recently, a conviction sentence from Pakistan’s iconoclastic judiciary for its unwillingness to seek the reopening of corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari — which may eventually lead to Gilani’s disqualification from office. Although the government has shown remarkable tenacity in the face of these challenges, its fights for political survival — taking place as relations with Pakistan’s principal sponsor, the United States, have plummeted — have obscured the worsening state of the country’s economic health at home.
The above excerpt was originally published in Foreign Policy.
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