Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been sentenced to three years imprisonment on corruption charges. Another popular political leader faces an accountability process devised by the state machinery, which is distinct from the process of accountability of political leaders as envisaged by the Constitution - an accountability process which prescribes acceptance or rejection of popular political leaders by the country's electorate on the basis of their performance in government. Of course, popular political leaders as citizens of the country are not immune from being subject to the criminal justice system and the ordinary laws of the land still apply to them.
But prosecuting popular political leaders as part of political vendettas, or in order to remove them from the political scene, physically or otherwise, is an age-old tradition of the Pakistani state machinery. The patterns of Pakistani political history clearly reveal that the removal of political leaders from the political scene through the mechanism of legal prosecution has never worked. From Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy and the Elder Bhutto, to Nawaz Sharif and now Imran Khan, the state machinery has never succeeded in erasing the popularity of deposed political leaders from the minds of the populace.
In each case, the removal of political leaders from the political scene was followed by political engineering of one type or another. The disqualification or removal of popular political leaders is always followed by an attempt by the state machinery to piece together a coalition of political collaborators to form governments in Islamabad and the provincial capitals to act as the frontmen of the deep state to continue the project of keeping outcast and deposed political leaders away from the centers of power, while maintaining the façade of democracy.
This does not make popular political leaders some kind of angels. Time and again, these political leaders have proven themselves inept, corrupt and inefficient. These outcast political leaders come back to power after the state machinery’s political engineering runs its due course, loses its energy or collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. More often than not, the internal configuration of the state machinery also undergoes a change.
We have witnessed these circular patterns in our political history since the ouster and hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979. Popular political leaders rise in popularity and enters into a brawl with the state machinery - the military, intelligence agencies and now judiciary as well - and is deposed and sent to jail or disqualified from holding public office. The state machinery undergoes a change of configuration and the new man on the top wants to form his own alliances. This pattern keeps on repeating itself again and again.
What are we losing as a society as a result of this incessant political upheaval? I call these events upheaval because while these patterns and events are happening in the power corridors, we continuously witness political unrest in society. One or the other political leader continuously hammers the populous with populist messages of delivering Pakistani society into some kind of promised land. The ensuing politicking becomes an end in itself.
Politics in any civilized and law-abiding society is primarily meant to ensure that the power relations in the society are managed in such a way that there is a general observance of laws and the rules of the game. There ought to be a relatively fair distribution of resources among different segments of the society. Imran Khan is the fourth former Prime Minister who has been sent to jail on the basis of an accountability process devised by the state machinery. The prosecution of four Pakistani prime ministers within a span of 45 years has greatly contributed in tilting the balance of power in favor of the state machinery.
So, for the state machinery, politics is a way of ensuring its continued dominance of the power structure, while for popular political leaders, politics is a process through which they ensure their continued survival in the political arena. Policy making is put on the backburner. The processes of managing power relations and the distribution of resources in the society is not carried out in a fair and transparent manner in this environment of chaos and near anarchy. Those holding and exercising power don’t have to face public or parliamentary scrutiny, as the leaders of popular political parties themselves live under the continuous fear of being sent to jail by the state machinery on whimsical grounds.
Popular political leaders represent the political aspirations of the masses and different segments of the society. So, when the state machinery removes a popular political leader from the political scene, they exclude those segments of the society which the leader represents from popular representation. This act of removing popular political leaders from the political scene inflicts a shock on the political system, a shock which ostensibly goes unnoticed in our society because we don’t have any sophisticated scientific methods to gauge public opinion on a daily basis.
For instance, public opinion polling agencies are not common in Pakistan and even if some exist, they face pressure from the state machinery not to reveal the whole truth. Imran Khan’s disqualification has been written on the wall since the riots of May 9, where his party apparatchiks were the main culprit. It is likely that Imran Khan will be tried for other heinous offenses as well, which include the allegation of planning attacks on military installations.
Imperceptibly, all of this has created a deep physical as well as psychological gulf between popular political leaders and the state machinery. Especially after the May 9 incidents, no military commander will be able to trust any popular political leader in Pakistani society. The PTI is an ordinary political party with no track record of large-scale organized violence. PTI leaders simply perceived themselves to be the victims of an intrigue carried out by the then military leaders. The result were attacks on military installations. The point is that PTI is not the only political party in the country which has grievances against the military. The problem with the military mind is that it cannot easily unlearn its threat perception matrices. And in the case of the Pakistani military, it has demonstrated a tendency of not being able to unlearn the threat they have perceived since time immemorial.
So, after what the PTI did on May 9, it is not possible that the Pakistani military will unlearn the lesson that they have to take care of the threat of physical harm from political forces - normal status quo oriented political forces - which have some kind of grievance against the military. Two steps are necessary to deal with this problem. The first step needs to be taken by all political forces to develop a mechanism for assuring military leaders that they don’t have any need to perceive physical threats from them. This is not an easy task, but at least they can try. The second step has to be taken by the military and that is to ensure that the force and power at the disposal of military commanders will never confront popular political leaders. In other words, the military will never become a party in political conflicts.
Imran Khan is a popular leader and nobody can wish away his role as a potent political factor in Pakistani politics in the foreseeable future. Taking a purely legal position on Imran Khan’s role in future politics or his participation in upcoming parliamentary elections will aggravate the political problems of our society. I don’t know whether this shock will prove to be that proverbial last straw on the camel's back. But one thing is for sure: whoever becomes Prime Minister after this episode will either be good for nothing or he will fall out with the state machinery within the first six months.
But prosecuting popular political leaders as part of political vendettas, or in order to remove them from the political scene, physically or otherwise, is an age-old tradition of the Pakistani state machinery. The patterns of Pakistani political history clearly reveal that the removal of political leaders from the political scene through the mechanism of legal prosecution has never worked. From Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy and the Elder Bhutto, to Nawaz Sharif and now Imran Khan, the state machinery has never succeeded in erasing the popularity of deposed political leaders from the minds of the populace.
In each case, the removal of political leaders from the political scene was followed by political engineering of one type or another. The disqualification or removal of popular political leaders is always followed by an attempt by the state machinery to piece together a coalition of political collaborators to form governments in Islamabad and the provincial capitals to act as the frontmen of the deep state to continue the project of keeping outcast and deposed political leaders away from the centers of power, while maintaining the façade of democracy.
This does not make popular political leaders some kind of angels. Time and again, these political leaders have proven themselves inept, corrupt and inefficient. These outcast political leaders come back to power after the state machinery’s political engineering runs its due course, loses its energy or collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. More often than not, the internal configuration of the state machinery also undergoes a change.
We have witnessed these circular patterns in our political history since the ouster and hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1979. Popular political leaders rise in popularity and enters into a brawl with the state machinery - the military, intelligence agencies and now judiciary as well - and is deposed and sent to jail or disqualified from holding public office. The state machinery undergoes a change of configuration and the new man on the top wants to form his own alliances. This pattern keeps on repeating itself again and again.
These outcast political leaders come back to power after the state machinery’s political engineering runs its due course, loses its energy or collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. More often than not, the internal configuration of the state machinery also undergoes a change.
What are we losing as a society as a result of this incessant political upheaval? I call these events upheaval because while these patterns and events are happening in the power corridors, we continuously witness political unrest in society. One or the other political leader continuously hammers the populous with populist messages of delivering Pakistani society into some kind of promised land. The ensuing politicking becomes an end in itself.
Politics in any civilized and law-abiding society is primarily meant to ensure that the power relations in the society are managed in such a way that there is a general observance of laws and the rules of the game. There ought to be a relatively fair distribution of resources among different segments of the society. Imran Khan is the fourth former Prime Minister who has been sent to jail on the basis of an accountability process devised by the state machinery. The prosecution of four Pakistani prime ministers within a span of 45 years has greatly contributed in tilting the balance of power in favor of the state machinery.
So, for the state machinery, politics is a way of ensuring its continued dominance of the power structure, while for popular political leaders, politics is a process through which they ensure their continued survival in the political arena. Policy making is put on the backburner. The processes of managing power relations and the distribution of resources in the society is not carried out in a fair and transparent manner in this environment of chaos and near anarchy. Those holding and exercising power don’t have to face public or parliamentary scrutiny, as the leaders of popular political parties themselves live under the continuous fear of being sent to jail by the state machinery on whimsical grounds.
Popular political leaders represent the political aspirations of the masses and different segments of the society. So, when the state machinery removes a popular political leader from the political scene, they exclude those segments of the society which the leader represents from popular representation. This act of removing popular political leaders from the political scene inflicts a shock on the political system, a shock which ostensibly goes unnoticed in our society because we don’t have any sophisticated scientific methods to gauge public opinion on a daily basis.
For instance, public opinion polling agencies are not common in Pakistan and even if some exist, they face pressure from the state machinery not to reveal the whole truth. Imran Khan’s disqualification has been written on the wall since the riots of May 9, where his party apparatchiks were the main culprit. It is likely that Imran Khan will be tried for other heinous offenses as well, which include the allegation of planning attacks on military installations.
For the state machinery, politics is a way of ensuring its continued dominance of the power structure, while for popular political leaders, politics is a process through which they ensure their continued survival in the political arena. Policy making is put on the backburner. The processes of managing power relations and the distribution of resources in the society is not carried out in a fair and transparent manner in this environment of chaos and near anarchy.
Imperceptibly, all of this has created a deep physical as well as psychological gulf between popular political leaders and the state machinery. Especially after the May 9 incidents, no military commander will be able to trust any popular political leader in Pakistani society. The PTI is an ordinary political party with no track record of large-scale organized violence. PTI leaders simply perceived themselves to be the victims of an intrigue carried out by the then military leaders. The result were attacks on military installations. The point is that PTI is not the only political party in the country which has grievances against the military. The problem with the military mind is that it cannot easily unlearn its threat perception matrices. And in the case of the Pakistani military, it has demonstrated a tendency of not being able to unlearn the threat they have perceived since time immemorial.
So, after what the PTI did on May 9, it is not possible that the Pakistani military will unlearn the lesson that they have to take care of the threat of physical harm from political forces - normal status quo oriented political forces - which have some kind of grievance against the military. Two steps are necessary to deal with this problem. The first step needs to be taken by all political forces to develop a mechanism for assuring military leaders that they don’t have any need to perceive physical threats from them. This is not an easy task, but at least they can try. The second step has to be taken by the military and that is to ensure that the force and power at the disposal of military commanders will never confront popular political leaders. In other words, the military will never become a party in political conflicts.
Imran Khan is a popular leader and nobody can wish away his role as a potent political factor in Pakistani politics in the foreseeable future. Taking a purely legal position on Imran Khan’s role in future politics or his participation in upcoming parliamentary elections will aggravate the political problems of our society. I don’t know whether this shock will prove to be that proverbial last straw on the camel's back. But one thing is for sure: whoever becomes Prime Minister after this episode will either be good for nothing or he will fall out with the state machinery within the first six months.