Huge Pakistan Rallies Seek Military's Political Ouster Salman Rafi Sheikh

‘Hybrid regime’ behind Imran Khan’s party.

Massive anti-government rallies organized by the 11-party opposition have gripped Pakistan’s political landscape, calling for an end to sub rosa military intervention in a system that has suffered through at least six coups – and uncounted attempts – since 1958 and resulted in the military running the country intermittently for three decades.

Interestingly, the rallies aren’t calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan or his party, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (Pakistan Justice Party), but rather the military establishment for masterminding Khan’s behind-the-scenes rise to power through allegedly rigged 2018 elections.

As Asia Sentinel reported in May 2020, the Army’s direct involvement in politics has massively increased since 2018, turning the supposedly elected government into what even the pro-government media now calls a ‘hybrid regime’ – a fusion of the military establishment and pro-military establishment politicians.

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the recently constituted 11-party opposition alliance from all four Pakistani provinces, has attracted thousands of people to its rallies in Gujranwala, a major Punjabi city, and in Karachi, the country’s commercial capital.  One of the main leaders of the movement, Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, said its aim is to oust the “illegal government. It’s been imposed upon us by the establishment. We reject this illegal rule.”

Nawaz Sharif, the three-time former prime minister who is currently living in London for “health reasons,” after being freed from a Pakistani prison where he was incarcerated on corruption charges, said the reason for Pakistan’s descent into economic turbulence is the continuing absence of true democracy and the military establishment’s tendency to install puppet regimes that it can control for its economic, political and defense benefit.

Sharif, who was unable to complete each of his five-year terms on all three occasions, has transformed his politics into what his party leadership calls an “ideological struggle’ for democracy and civil supremacy. Pakistan is seeking Sharif’s return on charges of “pillaging the state,” according to an October 20 Financial Times report.

While the roots of this struggle go back to the 1990s when Sharif was first ousted from power, it matured in the first decade of the present century when he decided to end his party’s rivalry with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and signed a ‘Charter of Democracy’ (CoD) in 2006 in London. 

The CoD is a remarkable document in the sense that it aimed not only to establish civilian supremacy in Pakistan and entrench the trichotomy of power between the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, but also to radically transform the centralized power structure. 

The charter provided the basis for the 18th constitutional amendment, a crucial revision passed in 2010 unanimously by the parliament, and the 7th National Finance Commission (NFC) in 2009, a formula for the distribution of federal fiscal resources between the center and the provinces.

Whereas the 18th amendment transferred a number of powers to the provinces and de-centralized the federation, the 7th NFC award transferred fiscal resources to the provinces to enable them to execute their responsibilities. Before the 7th NFC award, the Center controlled 86 percent of the country’s fiscal resources. Today, provinces control 58 percent of these resources.  The Center’s share has thus reduced by almost half.

Another crucial change the 18th amendment made to the constitution was to Article 6, which has virtually blocked the way for direct martial law by declaring abrogation, suspension, or holding in abeyance the constitution an ‘act of high treason.’ It also declares that no court in Pakistan will have the power to justify or legalize such an action.

Reference to the 18th amendment is necessary here because the changes made through it are largely the reason why the Army has not taken over in over a decade, instead choosing to rule from behind a façade, in this case, Khan’s party.

For one thing, the Constitution has become too politically powerful even for the Army to overcome. Second, most of the resources having now been transferred to the provinces, the Army can lo longer “dip its hands deep into the national kitty and take whatever it wants,” according to a senior PPP leader, as it used to before the 18th amendment,

Since it can’t take over the government without committing “high treason,” what it could still do is support parties, help them to win elections and use the “elected government” to pursue its own commercial and political interests. A crucial reason for the Army to have its own former officers on key civil posts is the imperative of protecting its own economic empire. As it stands, even the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a massive infrastructure project that was otherwise a Nawaz Sharif brainchild, is now headed by a former high-ranking military officer, Asim Bajwa, who today stands accused of having established a personal business empire worth millions of dollars.

The Army thus wants to get rid of the 18th amendment. It has made no secret of it. While the hybrid regime doesn’t have a two-thirds majority in the parliament, the opposition parties (most of which were involved in passing the 18th amendment) strongly realize and have often expressed that the regime’s single point agenda is to undo the 18th amendment so that the path for direct military takeovers and exclusive control over fiscal resources can be cleared. 

It is thus not a coincidence that the PDM coalition is very specifically against the Army’s interference in politics. It is also not a coincidence that the PDM’s manifesto includes “protection of the 18th amendment.” It is significant to note that the current ruling party was not involved in the amendment’s passage. In 2010, Imran Khan and his PTI were political nobodies without a single seat in the parliament when it was passed. 

The 18th amendment can only be protected when the Army’s interference is given a decisive blow. The PDM aims to do this. As the secretary-general of one opposition party said, “We don’t need the involvement of military establishment in politics. It must stop. That’s why all opposition will gather today. There is only one way forward for Pakistan – democracy without military involvement.”

This article was published in Asia Sentinel dated 22 October 2020. Republished with permission from Asia Sentinel.