The writer is a former editor of Dawn. THE next three months will test Prime Minister Imran Khan’s hypothesis that the opposition Pakistan Democratic Movement has run out of steam and is in the process of disintegrating with the coalescing partners PPP and PML-N pulling in different directions. It was a sign of the prime minister’s supreme confidence in his ability to stay in the saddle that on Thursday he openly suggested he favoured an authoritarian system and blamed democratic dispensations for the country’s lack of economic progress. The prime minister also termed the 2008-2018 (one tenure each of PPP and PML-N in office) as the worst period in the country’s history. He has in the past expressed great admiration for the dictatorial regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan.