The social and political base of Pakistan's political system is very narrow. Besides, the fortunes of our political system have not been on the rise in more than 75 years of the country's existence. In the past, we repeatedly came across situations where the legitimacy of our political system was tied to the fate of an individual. This is exactly the situation we are facing in the present times where Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan is in jail, serving a sentence imposed on him because of a 'criminal conviction'. His party, despite all the efforts of the state machinery—that includes the police, military and intelligence services—to block his path to an electoral victory in the last parliamentary elections, secured the position of the single largest party. Yet, efforts are still being made to keep him out of the political system. This has eroded the legitimacy of the system.
If parliamentary elections are any gauge, and based on the results of the February 2024 parliamentary elections, Imran Khan could be described as the most popular political leader in the country. By keeping him out of the system, we are inflicting a near-fatal blow to the legitimacy of the political system. This is, however, nothing new in our political culture. In our short political history, we have repeatedly delegitimised our system by ousting that 'one person' from our system, whose popularity transformed him or her into a symbol of legitimacy for the political system or whose absence clearly delegitimised the system in the eyes of the public. They hanged Bhutto and held parliamentary elections on a non-party basis. The system that we got as a result was devoid of legitimacy. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) under Benazir Bhutto secured the status of the single-largest party in the 1988 elections. This was the moment when we could have put our system back on track—Benazir Bhutto was representing popular sentiments and her opposition, the pro-military IJI, was doing what oppositions do in the national assembly. All the sheds of the political spectrum were represented in the parliament—it appeared that democracy was back in Pakistan. All the ideologies, right, left and centre were represented. But it so happened that intrigues and machinations were in abundance, and the international situation was not conducive. In Afghanistan, a civil war had just started, and in the Persian Gulf, the US attacked Iraq to force it to withdraw from Kuwait. This complicated the political situation in Pakistan by strengthening the hands of the military leaders at the domestic level. Benazir Bhutto was ousted from power.
In the subsequent ten years Benazir and her opponent, Nawaz Sharif, played the game of musical chairs with the military-backed Presidents orchestrating the music. There was, however, one positive development during the ten years that Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, the two contestants for power: they remained a part of the system even after they were ousted from the office of prime minister, one after the other. One used to become the prime minister, and the other used to patiently serve as leader of the opposition in the national assembly. In this way, during these ten years, the political system's legitimacy did not come under question as far as the mainstream of the country's politics was concerned.
My understanding is that Imran Khan came very close to breaching the organisational integrity of the Pakistani military with the help of the support he was able to garner from within the organisation. So, not punishing him would be a bad precedent
In October 1999, the military imposed martial law, and the military leader of the junta, General Pervaiz Musharraf, planned to keep the two popular leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, out of politics and the political system. The two leaders lived in self-exile. Musharraf's intelligence services pieced together a political system whose legitimacy was in doubt right from the very start, primarily because popular leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had been forcibly kept out of the political system. The political system engineered by Musharraf's intelligence services lacked legitimacy because it didn't represent the popular sentiments of that era. This became clear when all the Musharraf-backed candidates, a smorgasbord of politicians, lost miserably in the next parliamentary elections of 2008, in which both the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the PPP were allowed to contest as a legally legitimate party. PPP won the majority and formed the government. The King's party evaporated into thin air.
We entered a new era of politics with the rise of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf as a popular force around 2011. But old habits never die. This time, the state machinery—by state machinery, I mean police, investigation agencies, military, intelligence agencies and the judiciary— again followed the same pattern of ousting the popular political leader, Nawaz Sharif, from the system and thus again leading to a situation where the legitimacy of the system came into question. At that time, Imran Khan and his party were acting as the cheerleaders for the state machinery. Nawaz Sharif was not allowed to contest elections in 2018—this was a time when all public opinion polls showed that he was the most popular leader in Central Punjab—where a majority of his party's parliamentary seats were located. The situation took another turn when Nawaz Sharif appeared to have cut a deal with the military leadership, and it was Imran Khan's turn to be ousted. This time, Imran Khan has been kept out of politics, and thus, a new question on the legitimacy of the system has come into existence.
Remember, Imran Khan is no ordinary political leader in the times that we are living in. His party emerged as the single largest party in the 2024 parliamentary elections, even though the state machinery made its best efforts to create roadblocks on its path to victory. When the results of parliamentary elections clearly show that one person enjoys the confidence of large segments of the country's population and that person is expelled from the system with the help of coercive state machinery, the system loses its legitimacy. We have seen this happen in the case of Bhutto in 1977, in the case of Nawaz Sharif in 2017, and in the case of Imran Khan now.
The ruling party seems to be enjoying this seemingly unresolvable mistrust between PTI and the military. Apart from the logic of power politics, this mistrust should be seen from the perspective of national security. Ironically, none of the other political leaders has felt the need to resolve this problem at the earliest
A stable democracy demands that all operations to keep Imran Khan out of politics should be reversed, and he should be allowed to function as a normal political leader of a normal political party. But there is a problem here as another logic operates in the peculiar circumstances that prevail in our society. This is the logic of national security, as defined by the military leaders and the military establishment. The military leaders believe the May 9 attacks on military installations, allegedly by PTI workers and activists, were not simple violent attacks on buildings and installations. Rather, these attacks were aimed at unleashing a mutiny within the military, and Imran Khan and some of the military officials he was indirectly in contact with on that day were planning a sort of coup against the incumbent Chief of the Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir. So, the logic of national security demands that those planning to create divisions within the military and possible consequential bloodshed in the country should be put in the dock. This is the logic, if we believe the story as told by the military in this connection, which cannot be ignored.
The logic of democracy says that Imran Khan, the most popular leader in the country, should be brought back into the political system to make it legitimate. The logic of national security demands that Imran Khan, the troublemaker who wanted to provoke a mutiny in the army, should be held accountable. If we accept Imran Khan as someone essential for the legitimacy of our political system, we should remember that there would be implications for our national security. My understanding is that Imran Khan came very close to breaching the organisational integrity of the Pakistani military with the help of the support he was able to garner from within the organisation. So, not punishing him would be a bad precedent. Not only is this a bad precedent, but he might still have some tricks to play up his sleeves. Obviously, no military leader in our internal security situation would be ready to take any risk in this connection. But most unfortunately, Pakistani people might not take a severe sentence handed down to Imran Khan by a military court as something they can digest. It will prove to be a severe, rather, a fatal blow to the political system. Psychologically, Pakistani people have yet to come out of the trauma of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's execution. How would then Pakistanis react to a military court handing down a severe verdict against Imran Khan in a mutiny case is something our political and military leadership should seriously ponder upon.
Ironically, we don't see any attempt in our society to tackle the issues arising out of the May 9 attacks on military installations. Firstly, there is an issue of the military perceiving a threat to its physical security. Grievances against the military are in abundance in our society, and there is no political attempt to assure the military at the political and psychological level that they are not facing any threat from the country's mainstream political forces. Second is the issue of mistrust between the Pakistani military and the country's most popular political party, the PTI. The ruling party seems to be enjoying this seemingly unresolvable mistrust between PTI and the military. Apart from the logic of power politics, this mistrust should be seen from the perspective of national security. Ironically, none of the other political leaders has felt the need to resolve this problem at the earliest. We are facing a myriad of internal security problems in our society, and this mistrust will only add to our problems. Thirdly, a delegitimate political system in Imran Khan's absence would be a national security liability.
The military is hyperactive in politics. They take sides, and this makes treating the military as an organisation that needs to be protected at all costs a little difficult for political players
Maybe the ruling party believes that if the mistrust between PTI and the military is removed, then maybe their days would be numbered, or it is possible they would face a situation where they might be ousted from power. This is where the military's involvement in politics greatly complicates the management of national security in our country. The military is hyperactive in politics. They take sides, and this makes treating the military as an organisation that needs to be protected at all costs a little difficult for political players. It appears that the incumbent ruling party is more interested in keeping the military busy in its fight with PTI than providing it with an environment conducive to focusing on national security.