During election campaigns, politicians usually make promises that they have no intention and no way of keeping. Here is one promise that Khan is trying to keep: To punish corrupt politicians and force them to pay back the money they have stolen — the billions, he says, that have been stashed in Swiss banks. By now, though, it’s quite obvious that even if there is looted money in foreign banks, there is no way of bringing it back. Former President Asif Ali Zardari, who is in jail on money-laundering charges, was asked if he was willing to strike a deal with the government. “I will not give them six dollars,” he smirked.

Since the corrupt aren’t going to cough up their loot, Khan has had to go back to the mundane business of borrowing money and collecting taxes. But his passionate appeals that more Pakistanis pay their taxes don’t seem to be working. The tax-to-gross domestic product ratio is the lowest in five years, the tax authorities said recently. Maybe that’s because the people have seen too many of their leaders not pay what they owe. Although Khan’s assets were estimated at 3.8 billion rupees (about $36 million) in 2017, he pays fewer taxes than many mid-ranking journalists.

Khan used to claim that he is the best team-builder around. He has surrounded himself with the same political carpetbaggers he once railed against. More than half of his cabinet served the last military dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Of the man who now runs the railways ministry, Khan once said that he wouldn’t hire him as a peon; another person he called a bandit has become a crucial ally, as the speaker of the assembly in Punjab Province.

When he lectures on economic matters, Khan can sound like the Queen of England — as though he has never had to carry cash or set a monthly budget like middle-class citizens do. Like many affluent people who spend their lives in a bubble of financial security, he has been propagating Ayn Rand-esque myths about how to fix the economy. He has been saying that the one percent of Pakistanis who do pay taxes can’t carry the burden of the other 99 percent. Yet the 99 percent who don’t fill out returns definitely are funding the lifestyles of rich Pakistanis through indirect taxes, like those on gasoline and electricity. And yet they hardly get to see the inside of a hospital or the schools built with those taxes.

As Khan’s opponents question some of his statements, and his credentials, he has become more and more prickly. After Khan was called a “selected,” rather than elected, prime minister in Parliament, the speaker banned the use of the word “selected” on the floor. Since then, it seems that our representatives have never said “selected” as much as they do now.