No-confidence interval: Pakistan’s embattled PM

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. From London, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in New York, I'm John Fassman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

As allegations of war crimes in Ukraine stack up, calls for sweeping oil and gas sanctions are getting louder. But plenty of unsold Russian oil is already stranded at sea and is trading at a steep discount that may well draw in some big new buyers.

And few creatures delight the average gardener as much as earthworms. They keep the soil aerated and fertilized, essential for a healthy crop. But for the many species that compete with them for food, earthworms are a lot less welcome.

But first, Imran Khan became Pakistan's prime minister in 2018 on a popular wave. A famed international cricket captain who became the first candidate ever to win all five of the country's parliamentary constituencies. But in recent months, his star has faded sharply.

Yesterday, he was due to face a.

No confidence vote that he probably would have lost. At the last minute, the speaker of the Parliament, an ally of Mr. Khan, rejected the vote. In a televised address, Mr. Khan said he'd told Pakistan's president to dissolve parliament and told the country to prepare for snap elections.

Advise Bhaij di air A democratic society may harm democrats.

The move caught the country's many Opposition parties off guard, but they quickly challenged the Speaker's authority to reject the vote. Today, Pakistan's Supreme Court is set to rule on that. Either way, no Pakistani prime minister has ever served a full term, and it seems Mr. Khan is likely to be the next example of that trend. His sinking popularity reflects not just bad management. It may also reflect a coming shift in Pakistan's place in the geopolitical landscape.

Imran Khan had had a comfortable situation because the opposition was so much divided and he had the support of the military, which has been crucial to any government in Pakistan.

Max Rodenbeck is our South Asia Bureau chief.

But in the last few months, he's lost both of those things. The opposition has pulled together and the military has thrown up its hands and said, we're not intervening. And so Imran Khan has had to face the kind of full weight of the opposition without any backing.

Why, though? Why is this happening now?

The most obvious reason is the economic troubles that Pakistan has gotten into. Covid was a major blow to the economy. Inflation has been surging, particularly fuel prices going up. And this is all in the context where Imran Khan had promised a sort of Islamic socialist state, he'd look after the poor and so on, on that people just haven't seen any improvement. In fact, things have gotten worse for a lot of people, economically speaking. These opposition parties, of which there are many in Pakistan, all used to be against each other. But Imran Khan has managed to take off each one of them. And so they've finally pulled together to try and move against him. The military. When Imran Khan came into power, they backed him because his party seemed to represent a kind of pan Pakistani party. He was sort of a clean guy who was against corruption. And the other parties that had been in power, all of them are regionally strong, but none of them had a presence across Pakistan. And Imran Khan, with his background as a star cricket captain, seemed to sort of be a unifying figure. And that has kind of worn off over time. I think they thought he overplayed Pakistan's allegiance to the Taliban and pulled Pakistan a bit too far to the Islamist end. And I don't think the military was very happy with the way that Imran Khan alienated the west to a certain extent and alienated a lot of the rest of the opposition too.

So he sees a no confidence vote coming and manages to get around it. What's his view here? What's his tackle?

Imran Khan has claimed that there's this conspiracy against him and has actually pointed to Sort of foreign fingers meddling in the pie. He's clearly talking about America. And he's pointed to, for example, a letter which is said to have been delivered by an American which criticized Imran Khan. And of course, the United States has denied that it has any role in this. But Imran Khan has kind of tried to pull his populist cards.

So he says instead that there should be fresh elections now that matter as we're speaking, sits with the Supreme Court. Has he tried to do that because he thinks he's likelier to win an election than he would to survive a confidence vote vote.

I think the general feeling is that he's simply playing for time. This new confidence vote has been brewing since the beginning of March. And Imran Khan's government has found various ways to delay the vote, to put it off. Because had this just simply gone to a vote, he would have been out. So he's just managed to put off the vote in Parliament and gone to the public in the hopes that now there'll be a prolonged election campaign where he can pull off some kind of comeback. Should the Supreme Court come back with a ruling that the no confidence vote should go ahead. And then it looks like Rimran Khan will be out pretty quickly. The opposition has the numbers to defeat him pretty handily in a no confidence vote.

What do you think of that stratagem? Do you think he would win the popular vote?

It's unlikely at the current moment, but Pakistani politicians can be extraordinarily changeable. The influence of the military is very strong. If the army decides to move in and intervene on one side or the other and tilt the balance, that can actually change the outcome of an election. Imran Khan may be hoping he can get back in the good graces of the military. That's one thing. Also, he may count on being able to break up and divide again the opposition, which is divided regionally. It's divided by personalities, different dynasties at each other's throats. You know, the opposition has rarely come together as it has in the last few weeks. And Imran Khan may be hoping that he can drive a wedge between them again during the election campaign so it gives him a chance to survive. But I think that Imran Khan may be underestimating the degree of his unpopularity. I think people want a change in any case. And in fact, the way that he's managed this last crisis has not brought him more popularity either, I think. So it looks like the opposition has a good chance to take him down through elections if they can't take him down through a no confidence vote.

And in either case, who then would take power?

It's almost certain to be Shahbaz Sharif in power as the new prime minister, who would be running the country at least until the next scheduled election, which is supposed to be in August 2023. Shahbaz Sharif, the head of the largest of the opposition parties, who's the younger brother of Pakistan's former Prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. He's a big figure in the state of Punjab, which is Pakistan's biggest state, more than half its people. And Shahbaz Sharif has been in and out of government for a long time. He's a familiar figure and sort of trusted figure to many. He's been accused of corruption by Imran Khan, among others. But then Imran Khan accused virtually everyone in the opposition of corruption. So that's nothing new. And if successful, the return of Shahbaz Sharif would show that Imran Khan's attempt to kind of create a new type of politics where there are no more dynasties, there's no more regional parties has been swept away. And we're back to the old Pakistan where it's political dynasties and regional parties that dominate.

What do you think all of these possible outcomes mean for Pakistan regionally? If the military sort of has run the show and has expressed its preferences here, what, what can we expect to see, do you think?

Should there be a change of leadership in Pakistan, there might well be a major change in its foreign relations. Imran Khan has been increasingly prickly towards the west during his time in power, which annoyed quite a few people abroad, but also seems to have annoyed the Pakistani military to an extent. It looks like the military wants Pakistan to be slightly more pro Western. And in fact, General Bajwa, who's the commander in chief, made a speech a couple of days ago where he criticized Russia for invading Ukraine. Pretty bluntly, it talks about being softer on India, and the military is a little, little bit upset about how Pakistan has become too dependent on China as its main source of aid. And the military has a strong influence and it's likely that they may push whatever incoming government there is in Pakistan to take a slightly more moderate line and a slightly less hostile line towards the West.

Thanks very much for your time, Max.

Thank you, Jason.

Foreign.

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As sanctions piled up on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, diplomatic economic targeting the country's super rich, it seemed clear what kind of sanction would hit hardest. And within a couple of weeks, President Joe Biden said America would make that call.

Today I'm announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia's economy. We're banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy.

There are simply fewer buyers for Russia's oil at the moment. So the going rate for it has gone down, too. But as that price has tanked, some big new customers may be taking an interest.

Since the start of the war, Russia's oil exports, made by SEASO on sea ships, which make up the majority of its oil exports, have fallen dramatically.

Matthew Favas is a finance correspondent for the Economist.

At the end of March, the figures were down by about 2 million barrels a day, which is about half of what it usually ships overseas. Some of these oil exports continue, and they're still continuing to an extent, but most of these purchases were made and paid for before the war. So you can expect the amount of oil exports to drop even further in the coming weeks.

And we heard on the show last week how Russia's economy is broadly weathering a lot of the sanctions that have been placed on it pretty well.

Is that to say that the ones.

On oil are starting to really bite?

Well, actually, when you look at oil, the sanctions that have been announced so far are actually quite minimal. The reason for that is that Western countries have been first quite reluctant to go too hard on Russia on its oil exports because they don't want to see the oil price jump by too much. It's already really high. They don't want it to rocket much further. It's also because if there is an outbag on oil, which would hurt Russia quite significantly, the fear is that Russia retaliates by cutting its gas exports, which are very important to Europe, much more than they are for Russia's revenues. So what you've seen so far is only America, which has banned oil imports into the country, and it did not buy much oil from Russia in the first place. And lately you've seen Germany also, which said it would cut its purchases by half, but it's not very clear when it would start cutting these purchases. So instead, what happened is exports have fallen, not really because of the sanctions directly, but because Western buyers, such as big energy firms like Shell, like bp, they fear a public backlash. And the buyers also have faced financial and logistical difficulties because banks are really reluctant to lend to buyers of Russian oil. It's very hard to find ships. Ship owners are really wary. They're also charging quite a lot. They're struggling to get insurance. And then each time new sanctions are announced, there's hundreds and hundreds of pages that the buyers, the big energy firms, they need to read through that. And often it's written in a way that's pretty ambiguous. So they have to study these for hours and hours, and that make many Russian deals hardly worth the hassle. So the sum of all that, more than the sanctions themselves, means that a lot of oil is simply sitting in.

Tankers undelivered, which surely means that for those who would actually buy it, they'll get it at a discount.

Yeah, exactly. So if you look at Urals crude, the grade of oil that Russia produces, it's currently trading at a discount of around $30 a barrel. So significant discount. And I've spoken to traders who expect the discount to perhaps widen even further, maybe to $40 a barrel in a week or so.

So there's plenty of reason for lots of buyers of regions even to reduce dependence on oil. But if it is so cheap, there must be some willing buyers.

Well, Russian oil is starting to look like a bargain, really because of the discount. Two big countries in particular have not joined in with the west sanctions, and they are willing to jump on this bargain, and they are India and China. So India is already acting on the opportunity. But it's worth pointing out that it's a drop in the bucket compared to what Russia is trying to sell. The International Energy Agency, which is an official forecaster for all things energy, thinks that the volume of unsold oil by Russia could reach 3 million barrels per day in April. And an expert I spoke to does not see India buying more than 10 million barrels a month. So what India could buy potentially at the maximum is basically three, four days of unsold oil from Russia. So it's quite small. And I guess more troubling for Russia still is that China, which has a bigger capacity to buy Russian oil, has not done it to a large extent yet.

And why not, if it is cheap and there's no backlash concerns?

Well, even for China, which can be very inventive, transporting oil from Russia is also more difficult. And there's the added complication that shipping oil from Russia to Europe usually takes four to five days. Doing it to Asia to China takes about 40, 45 days. So that's a headache. But then I guess the bigger reason, especially for China, the main reason, is that Chinese traders are probably waiting for the price to fall further because they know that Russia's negotiating position is going to worsen. They expect that the discount that we spoke about is going to widen, and they know a good bargain when they see one. So I would expect that as the Russian discount widens, they will really seek to take advantage of that.

And so there's a kind of reorganization then of the whole market for Russian oil. What do you think the long run effects of that will be?

Yes, exactly. So what I would expect is that over time, China will take advantage of this position, but as China buys more from Russia, it will buy less from other places. And at the same time, you're going to see Europe scrambling for supplies. So the flows that are quite established in the oil market, you could see them change. You could see a pretty big rejigging of the whole market. For example, you could see North Sea oil stay in Europe instead of being shipped to Korea and China. Europe will probably also buy more from West Africa, from America, and then the rest of the world will have to content itself with what Europe doesn't want. And these shifts in flows are likely to last because there is a certain rigidity to the oil market whereby refineries that take in the oil to make it then into consumable products for cars, for power stations, they are generally set up to accept certain types of oil which have a certain sulfur content. And it's really hard to switch from one type to another. So the results of this more fragmented oil trading system will be a structurally higher price for oil importers. And the finely tuned system that we had before the war has been disrupted. And it could be for quite a long time, because it's not just the flows that are reorganizing, it's the whole supply chain from refineries to then further downstream. So that could last for quite a while.

Mathieu, thank you very much for your time.

You're welcome, Jason.

I'm in my garden just north of New York City. March was unseasonably cold, so I haven't yet planted my spring crops, my cucumbers and carrots, sugar peas, chilies and herbs. I'm just turning over the soil now, and unfortunately, even though it rained overnight and actually well into the morning, it all looks pretty pristine, by which I mean there are no earthworms. To me, soil rich with earthworms means a happy garden.

It's not wrong to love worms in lots of parts of the world. They do the soils a great deal of good.

Matt Kaplan is a science correspondent at the Economist.

But the reality is that earthworms have not been in a lot of parts of the planet until very recently when humans reintroduced them. And now researchers are realizing they're actually causing quite a lot of damage.

I live near New York. Worms do good for my garden. How long have worms been here in North America?

In sections of North America like upstate New York and Ithaca, for example, where you had lots and lots of really cold temperatures not too long ago, like the ice ages. In 12,000 to 20,000 years ago, glaciers wiped out most of the worm populations. And they only got back to large sections of the land a couple hundred years ago when farmers and fishermen brought them there.

And how do worms impact the ecosystem?

The reason you like the worms so much in your garden is because they're burrowing through the soil. They're finding bits of organic matter that have rotted away. They are then digesting that and pooping it out in a new, nutrient rich little broth. Because it's carrying so much broken down organic matter is great for growing crops. And so worms are welcomed onto farms. They also, as they make their tunnels, bring lots of valuable gases into the soil. They aerate it. And so worms are widely viewed as a great thing. But the reality is that in places that the worms haven't existed for 12,000 years, other animals got a foothold and developed their own ecosystems. And now, as the worms burrow into that territory, things are changing. And change in this case is not always good.

So tell me about the research that discovered this. Who did it, and how did they go about doing it?

So the new research was led by Malte Jochem at Leipzig University in Germany. He was really interested in understanding how worms were impacting ecosystems, where they've been absent for well over 10,000 years. Because he knew very well that aside from just collecting dead and dying debris in the soil and pooping it out, worms are also voraciously consuming things like nematode worms, which are tiny flatworms and bacteria and fungi and other organisms. And those organisms are food for other animals too. He went to a forest which overlooks Barrier Lake in Alberta, Canada. Now, this location is really important because Barrier Lake has got some high altitude sections and some lower altitude sections. Near the low altitude sections by the base of the lake, the worms are relatively common. You'll find upwards of 100 plus individuals on a single 1 meter by 1 meter plot. And way up at the top, you're finding very few worms. There are about four or five worms per square meter. And this created a wonderful opportunity to study how different populations of worms were affecting the ecology of the forest in different ways.

And so what did they find as.

They wandered around collecting insects off of the different plants that are in the forest and noting which plants were even there? As they went around, they noticed that on plots that had massive invasions of worms, a lot of these insects and spiders were in much lower numbers. In areas that the worms had conquered, where worms were really dominant, there were 61% fewer arthropod species overall.

So far, what you're describing kind of sounds like a Pixar horror movie, but is it self contained? What about the effects higher up the food chain?

The news overall is not good. The ecosystem is changing. Plants don't seem to be affected all that much, at least not yet. As for higher up the food chain, it's very difficult to tell at this stage how amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals are being shaped by the fact that the animals at the bottom of the food chain are changing. There is no question that there will be changes because as worms become dominant, some animals will be able to adapt and cope with worms as a new food item, while others that are very specific to insect feeding or spider feeding will see those changes affect their populations in substantial ways. So the jury is really out as to whether or not this is going to alter ecosystems for the worse. What is absolutely clear is that it is going to alter ecosystems and it needs to be monitored more closely.

Ethically. Am I still on terra firma if I'm happy to see worms in my garden?

John, the reality is you're not going to be able to get rid of them anyway, so you might as well be happy that they're there and just hope that we don't reintroduce them to other places in the near future.

Matt, thanks so much for joining us today.

My pleasure.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastseconomist.com and you.

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Sam.