After independence in 1947, Pakistan was established as a parliamentary system based on elected forms of governance. However, the military has ruled for over three decades (1958-1971, 1977-1988, 1999-2008) instead and it has been difficult for a democracy to take root because of governing conflicts. The first five-year term of an elected government started in 2013 and 2018 signifies the first democratic transfer of power.
Pakistan first came under military rule in 1958 when General Ayub Khan seized the presidency from Iskander Mirza. Officially, martial law lasted 44 months, but Ayub Khan left office only in 1969 and named General Yahya Khan as his successor.
Like Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan was the Chief Martial Law Administrator. After an embarrassing loss to India in the 1971 war, Yahya Khan was forced to name Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who won the nation’s first general elections, as his successor.
The second military coup took place in 1977 when General Zia ul Haq dissolved the parliament and placed Bhutto under house arrest. He resigned in 1985 after picking
Muhammad Khan Junejo as the country’s new prime minister. Haq continued as President till his death in a plane crash in 1988.
The third and last military coup took place in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf ousted Nawaz Sharif, who was facing criticism for retreating from Kargil. Musharraf
resigned in 2008 with Asif Ali Zardari becoming the new president.
However, civilian governments are subject to military influence and pragmatically accommodate the army in order to reduce the chances of a coup. In 2013, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) appointed General Raheel Sharif as the chief of army staff. The General then, like all his predecessors, assumed substantial influence over Pakistan’s national security and foreign policies.
Nawaz Sharif subsequently angered the General and army with his speeches criticising military officers and offering peace to neighbouring countries. By extending an opportunity to strengthen diplomatic, trade, and security ties with India, Sharif was signalling the legitimacy of accepting India as a partner and not an existential threat to Pakistan.
This had two major implications. Firstly, it would make civilian and political institutions stronger in dealing with India over economic, security, and energy ties. Secondly, it would raise questions about the dominance of the military in foreign policy, mainly its defence expenditures. Since the country’s inception, the justification for a ballooned military budget has been the undiminished threat to India.
For these reasons, the army considered Sharif to be an unsuitable candidate of choice in future elections and pressurised the Supreme Court to disqualify him from holding office in August 2017. The Court ruled against him under Article 62 of the constitution on corruption charges, stating he was neither truthful nor honest these remain ambiguous charges undefined in law. Sharif has subsequently been banned from politics for life and is currently jailed along with his daughter.
The only candidate left to be cultivated by the army was Imran Khan of PTI. Khan has had a chequered political career since he founded PTI in 1996. He used to refuse to play the game of forging alliances, which is an essential tactic since it is rare for any political party to get majority across different provinces of Pakistan. Khan was also critical of the military, accusing them of rigging the 2013 elections in favour of Sharif, and selling Pakistani blood for American dollars. However, in 2013, Khan saw his inability to win support nation-wide without the backing of the army and changed his stance to praise the military unconditionally, including its management of internal security. The military reciprocated in his favour.
Faking of Democracy
Terror is backed by the military was a popular chant during the 2018 elections and cast aspersions on democracy taking root in Pakistan. There is evidence to suggest the military ran a campaign of intimidation and threats to secure Imran Khan’s position by suppressing his political opponents, the judiciary, media, and activists.
Firstly, the media was subjected to unprecedented pressure, raising concerns that the army was carrying out a silent coup. There were widespread abductions of journalists, censorship, and financial ruin of establishments that refused to toe the official line do not cover or praise the PML-N and focus on the winning image of PTI and Imran Khan.
Geo TV, the country’s largest broadcaster, was forced off-air for weeks. Dawn, the oldest newspaper, was threatened for interviewing Sharif where he suggested Pakistani militants were responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The brazen suppression of two of the largest media houses was a warning to the rest to fall in line. The suspension of media and press rights highlighted the excess of military influence on the electoral process.
Secondly, the vote banks of opponents were systemically broken down and candidates from PPP and PML-N were forced to join the PTI 248 politicians switched parties in four months. Party workers of the opposition were detained, harassed and disqualified from contesting elections.
The army facilitated the rise of political parties with ties to jihadists, terror groups and right-wing Islamists. They were encouraged to field hundreds of candidates and the Election Commission of Pakistan, which is supposed to disallow any individual with terror links from contesting or organising elections, made no efforts to stop them.
These groups contesting include the Lashkar-e-Taiba (conducted terror attacks in 2008 in Mumbai), the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat (has ties with the Islamic State) and the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Labbaik (popular for enforcing Pakistan’s blasphemy law that has led to murders of religious minorities on frivolous allegations of offending the Prophet). These extremists, backed by the military, will now be a part of the electoral coalition led by Imran Khan.
The military has denied any such influence and maintained that they do not intervene in elections. Michael Gahler, chief of the European Union election observer mission, observed that there was no rigging. He, nonetheless, “concluded there was a lack of equal opportunity” the pressure on media, the “far stronger” efforts to encourage party switching and “judicial conduct” had all negatively impacted the vote.
Though Pakistan has since seen a fairly democratic transition of power, the influence of the army on the decision-making bodies has not reduced.
In fact, recent developments in Pakistan and the no-trust vote against Prime Minister Imran Khan suggest that the influence has increased in subtler ways.
History tells us that no prime minister in Pakistan’s history has been ousted through a no-confidence motion. But, then, it’s been also impossible for prime ministers to remain in office by antagonising the military.
Every time the Pakistan Army has taken control of the federal government, it has done so to bring order amid political chaos the crisis around and aided by Imran Khan could prove to be the reason and the ground for establishing military order in Pakistan.
