There are three actors in Pakistan’s political arena which can make things happen. The first is the military, which along with the intelligence services it controls, dominates the power structure, and manages the mechanics of the political system. The second is the superior judiciary, which by way of its final authority over the law, and its power to interpret the constitution and thus its powers to review every action of the executive and legislative organs of the state, has assumed and acquired abnormal political power in a political system, which, is both unstable and in flux. The third player, surprisingly, is the media — more specifically, electronic news channels. They have a tremendous impact on our society, where the low literacy rate and political literacy is at its lowest ebbs. The media can form opinions, it can change public opinion and unwittingly and inadvertently, destroys or builds images of political leaders, demolishes painstakingly constructed images and myths of state institutions, and unleashes extremely destructive political trends in the society.
Pakistani political parties are the most impotent force in the system, but they still survive in this arena. They form insolent compartments, which with their intellectually barren existence, always fail to bring about any change. Their only function seems to be to attract votes — the strategy is to muster as many votes as they can in the parliamentary elections. Two of these political parties — the PML-N and PTI — have become adept in doling out favors upon their favored voters and constituencies out of the national exchequer and then pretending as if the money is coming out of their pocket. When out of power, these parties never miss an opportunity to malign state institutions, campaign against the state machinery and launch agitations within the country.
These political parties are the free riders of the Pakistani political arena. They come to power or are ousted because of the decisions or actions of the military generals, judges of the superior judiciary or trends in the media. Political parties or political groups never come to power as a result of power sharing formulae agreed upon between the political parties, groups or players.
The popularity of the political parties could be described as the function of political activity or campaigns of popular political leaders like Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif. But that is hardly the case. Both Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif became popular after it became clear to the Pakistani masses, especially urban middle classes that each of these leaders could take decisions for the state to continue to subsidize the luxurious lifestyle of the middle classes.
In the absence of traditions and norms, popular leaders like Imran Khan will always be dependent on the whims and decisions of non-representative institutions and officials like judges of the superior judiciary or the generals and spymasters.
The machinations of the military and its affiliated intelligence services played no small part in the rise of Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif. I call these political leaders and parties free riders because they come to power or are ousted from power not because of what they do, themselves; they come to power or are ousted from power because of decisions others make. They win parliamentary elections, but their victory doesn’t bring them to power.
For instance, Imran Khan and his party clearly won the 2024 parliamentary elections. The fact that they failed to form a government despite their victory speaks volumes about their political impotence. In a functioning parliamentary democracy, there is no way a majority party could not form a government, primarily because there are norms and traditions which are well entrenched within the system. Nobody dares to challenge or violate the traditions and norms.
In the absence of traditions and norms, popular leaders like Imran Khan will always be dependent on the whims and decisions of non-representative institutions and officials like judges of the superior judiciary or the generals and spymasters. The judges and generals will be in charge and they will continue to enjoy power to bring about a change in the political situation.
Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif themselves strengthened the hands of the doers of the Pakistani political arena — in fact, it was Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan who enabled the judges and generals to consolidate their position as the doers of the political arena. Like supplicants, they seek favors from judges, spymasters, and generals to bring them to power.
It is a pity that Pakistan's people have gotten nothing better than Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, who don’t even possess political common sense. This basic fact always seems beyond their mental capacity that their style of politics will keep them relegated as free riders in the Pakistani political system, dependent on the doers of Pakistan’s political arena—the generals, judges, and spymasters.
In the process, they never allow parliamentary and political traditions and norms to take root in society. Both Khan and Sharif made repeated mistakes in this connection. Imran Khan tried to bulldoze the no confidence motion against himself in the National Assembly by allowing his speaker to rule the motion out of order — when it is a clear parliamentary tradition that a no confidence motion could not be rejected before a vote count has taken place in the National Assembly.
If you can bulldoze somebody else's majority, you are in fact opening the gate for the authorities to do the same to you when you gain a clear majority in the parliamentary elections.
When Nawaz Sharif was sent to jail before the 2018 parliamentary elections, he raised a lot of hue and cry about the ill-treatment meted out to a sitting Prime Minister, but when the system treated another Prime Minister poorly - Imran Khan, Nawaz Sharif jumped at the opportunity to become a free rider of the decision of powers that be, the doers of Pakistani political arena—the generals and the spymasters.
It is a pity that Pakistan's people have gotten nothing better than Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, who don’t even possess political common sense. This basic fact always seems beyond their mental capacity that their style of politics will keep them relegated as free riders in the Pakistani political system, dependent on the doers of Pakistan’s political arena—the generals, judges, and spymasters.
The generals are powerful in Pakistan’s political arena because they control the largest organized group of highly trained manpower. The spymasters are powerful because they are in possession of information about whatever is happening in every nook and cranny of society. Constitutionally and legally, the spymasters are supposed to share this massive flow of information with a select group of generals and top civilian political executives. But in the post-Zia period, the military dominated intelligence services have started to function as a political arm of a select group of army generals.
One of the sources of army generals’ powers is that in the present system, they are prime recipients of the flow of information which intelligence agencies control. Another source of the generals and spymasters’ combined power is the international legitimacy they have acquired since the start of the war against terror by way of their ability within Pakistan to meet the demands of global powers in connection with counterterrorism operations. They completely eclipsed political leaders when it comes to the connection with the international political elite.
While in opposition, political leaders or the free riders, are completely dependent on the judiciary to achieve even the smallest of their political objectives. An opposition leader is caught in an anti-corruption drive, and they seek bail. He will go to the superior courts. Say the government enacts a law in parliament to curb political activity, the free riders are completely short of political ingenuity, primarily because in our case, parliament is a non-functioning institution, and the political parties will immediately move the courts. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) bulldozes the opposition party’s central secretariat outer wall – same recipe, go to the courts. Opposition leaders’ names end up on the Exit Control List (ECL) - seek remedy from the courts.
All this happens as if the courts are spoon feeding the opposition. All this happens because the opposition and government in our system function as warring factions with no interaction or exchanges conducted in a civilized manner. Now there are more chances of India and Pakistan resuming some kind of dialogue, than any kind of talks between the PML-N and PTI. This situation makes the judiciary the second most important power center in the country’s political arena.
Pakistan has an exceptionally long and strong tradition of non-representative institutions dominating the political process in the country.
The PML-N is now making the same kind of complaint against the interference of the judiciary in the affairs of the executive which PTI and Imran Khan used to make while he was in power. Intellectually, both parties are so barren and held hostage by their own self-destructive logics that it has never passed their mind that what the Pakistani superior judiciary is displaying is a kind of “messiah syndrome,” which till today was the specialty of army generals and spymasters. It seems both the PML-N and PTI leaders realize that judiciary’s behavior would not only make the executive branch of the state ineffective, but would eventually lead the country towards anarchy. But opportunism. which dominates their political attitudes, prevents them from saving the state and society from this impending anarchy.
The third doer, the electronic news channels, are engaged in an unabashed race to attract as many eyeballs as they can to grab the largest share of advertisement revenues from the private and public sector. They have hired compulsive liars and habitual sensationalists and scandal mongers as the faces on their screens. There are no regulatory mechanisms and the Pakistani journalism community tends to equate regulatory mechanisms with attacks on the freedom of media.
I wholeheartedly support the axiom that the media should be free from external pressures so that it can act responsibly from within. However, compulsive liars and habitual sensationalists in our media landscape are no small party contributing to pushing society towards impending anarchy. A body to regulate the functioning of the media is necessary, a body which is composed of independent citizens who are not from the government or the state machinery. It is not that Pakistani media is at present independent and a regulatory body will curb its independence. To the very contrary, anyone can go to the media and drop his filth at the doorsteps of media houses, which is then projected at a national scale.
Pakistan has an exceptionally long and strong tradition of non-representative institutions dominating the political process in the country. But we have always had towering personalities, intellectuals, thinkers, and political leaders, who with their ingenuity, made attempts to put the country back on the tracks of new political possibilities.
As a profoundly serious student of the country’s political history, I can say that we have reached a dead end. Political leaders are stupid, the media men are compulsive liars. We do not see any intellectuals and thinkers in our midst. The judges and generals have been behaving as if they are feudal lords. May God help us.