No Matter Who Wins
Pakistan’s Vote, the Nation Loses, BY HUSAIN HAQQANI, JULY
23, 2018
The
military thinks elections give it a facade to rule from above. But that plan
keeps backfiring.
Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa (second from
the right), Pakistani Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Zafar Mahmood Abbasi
(center), Pakistani Air Chief Marshal Mujahid Anwar Khan (top-right) and
Pakistani Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Zubair Mahmood Hayat
(second from left) arrive to receive Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena
during the Pakistan Day military parade in Islamabad on March 23. (Aamir
Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images)
More than 100 million Pakistanis will have the
chance to cast their ballots in general elections on July 25, but the vote
is already tainted by the blatant meddling of the country’s all-powerful
military, with a series of assists by a partisan judiciary. This
interference—by what is known locally as the establishment—ensures that
whatever the results on election day, the outcome will not rid Pakistan of its
chronic instability and poor civil-military relations.
The establishment wants to root out the two
parties that have dominated the political scene for the last three decades: the
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The
PML-N, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is popular among ethnic
Punjabis, who constitute about half of Pakistan’s population. The PPP—of
the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and now run by her widower, former
President Asif Ali Zardari—draws on its traditional support in the southern
Sindh province. From the establishment’s perspective, the two parties represent
entrenched dynasties that will never see eye to eye with the military on
foreign policy and national security. Army generals deem both Sharif and
Zardari corrupt and are instead advancing the fortunes of the star former
cricketer Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
Although Khan has been in politics since 1997,
he has fared poorly at the ballot box in the three parliamentary elections he
and his party have so far contested. He has never held any government position,
and most accounts suggest he is ill-prepared for
the responsibility of running a nuclear-armed country of more than 200 million
people. Moreover, most of his party’s candidates this time are former PML and
PPP parliamentarians persuaded—or coerced—by the military to defect and join
the PTI. And so, while Khan would be a first-time prime minister, his
government would comprise some of the same people whose corruption he has
decried throughout his political career.
The establishment has orchestrated an elaborate
set of legal and political moves to pave the way for Khan’s victory. The most
important of these moves was the removal of Sharif as prime minister one year
ago. After a corruption investigation sparked by the leaked Panama Papers,
Supreme Court Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar disqualified Sharif
for failing to fulfil an arcane constitutional criteria for “honesty and sagacity.” Sharif was then put on
trial and convicted, along with his daughter Maryam, for
failing to explain their ownership of property in London. Pakistan’s
politicians are notorious for corruption, but even Sharif’s detractors acknowledge the court overreached.
In
effect, Nisar forced an elected prime minister to resign before facing a proper
trial in a criminal court. (Disclosure: Among other politically motivated
cases, Nisar also revived the hearing of charges against me—the case claims I
sought American assistance to stop a possible coup in the aftermath of the 2011
U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden. After a couple of hearings, a warrant request was
rejected by Interpol, and the case was shelved. I have no doubt it will be
revived once more when the establishment feels the need to try to bully me
again.)
The fact is that many Pakistanis recognize that
running afoul of the military, and not just corruption, is at the heart of the
proceedings against Sharif, who has now been elected prime minister three times
but failed to complete a single term. The Pakistani military obviously
wants a civilian facade in the form of an elected government that follows the
military’s dictates
The Pakistani military
obviously wants a civilian facade in the form of an elected government that
follows the military’s dictates
on policy toward India, Afghanistan, jihadi terrorism, and
relations with China and the United States. It does not want a genuinely
popular civilian politician in power, backed by an electoral mandate, and
certainly not one that might alter the country’s trajectory.
The strategy for control this time has
centered on giving Khan’s PTI, a few smaller political parties, and a large
number of independent candidates a free hand while making it difficult for the
PML, and even the PPP, to campaign. In addition to Sharif, the courts have
disqualified a large number of PML candidates. Military intelligence officers
have intimidated several influential local leaders into joining Khan’s PTI,
other pro-establishment parties, or running as independents. The media’s
freedom has been curtailed, with many journalists receiving
direct threats from army officers; the military’s public relations chief
announced a list of “anti-state” journalists and bloggers at a press conference
in an effort to intimidate them. Several religious extremists, including some who have
been designated as terrorists, have been allowed to run and campaign for office
freely. Anti-establishment and anti-Taliban candidates have faced attacks by terrorists while Khan’s party
and others backed by the military have so far been spared. And although there
has been less violence this year than in the 2008 and 2013 elections, the
Pakistan Army plans to deploy 371,388 troops and reservists on polling
day, raising fears that soldiers might be used for a final push to influence
the election results. The election commission has banned candidates’
representatives from bringing cell phones to polling stations—a move clearly
designed to prevent the recording of sounds or images that expose interference
with voting.
The irony is that such political engineering has
backfired in the past. In Pakistan’s first election in 1970, the army similarly
hoped to contain Bengali leader Sheikh Mujib, but instead his Awami League
swept the polls; the subsequent chain of events led to East Pakistan breaking
away and becoming Bangladesh. Then, from 1988 onward, the military’s political
engineering focused on reducing the influence of Bhutto’s PPP. In those days,
Sharif was the military’s hand-picked alternative to Bhutto. That move, of
course, has backfired as well. The fact that three decades later, the
military’s victory in decimating one thorn in its side—the PPP—is accompanied
by the need to launch a new operation against its previous creature—Sharif and
his PML-N—should serve as a warning that politics does not always play out as
envisaged by the planners in Pakistan’s army headquarters.
Opinion polls indicate that the PML retains its base.
Sharif’s supporters in Punjab are proving difficult to contain. Hundreds of
PML-N activists had to be arrested to prevent a large turnout when
Sharif announced he would return from London to go to prison after his conviction.
The party seems to be preparing to fight the results of the elections in the
streets if it feels it has been cheated of victory.
If Sharif’s PML-N overcomes all odds and still
manages to win, the corruption cases and the ensuing legal battles will continue
to impair its ability to govern. In that case, civil-military relations will
also remain tense, with the potential for another showdown. On the other hand,
if someone like Khan is put into office after an election that is notably
manipulated, he will lack the credibility needed for effective governance. This
may seem like a paradox: Why would Khan even need credibility if the military
is really in charge? But that very credibility is critical to the military’s
goal of keeping up the pretense that Pakistan is a constitutional democracy,
not a dictatorship. If the puppet strings are too visible, then the puppeteer
holds all responsibility for all outcomes. The establishment wants it both
ways: power but no responsibility
The establishment wants
it both ways: power but no responsibility.
The Pakistani military has become a prisoner of
its own system. The generals want the facade of democracy, but they do not let
any politician grow into the job; when problems inevitably emerge, they believe
those deficiencies are exclusively attributable to the incompetence and
corruption of politicians. And so: out with the old, in with the new, all
blessed by the military. The cycle is never-ending. But there is a complete
unwillingness to recognize that the military’s obsession with India, its
support of jihadi terrorism for the last several decades, and the international
isolation that has resulted from policies championed by the military might also
have something to do with the country’s reputation as a state perpetually
stricken by crisis. It is a damning indictment of the military’s priorities
that even though it boasts the world’s sixth-largest army—and also the world’s
sixth-largest nuclear arsenal—Pakistan still has the world’s highest newborn
mortality rate.
No matter who wins on July 25, Pakistan’s
military-led establishment will continue to wield effective power. Jihadis and
other religious extremists will continue to flourish. Pakistan’s international
isolation and economic problems are also likely to endure. Only the military
can change any of this, if it really wants to break the cycle of instability
that Pakistani politics seems destined to endure.
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