For Imran Khan’s dedicated workers, what is happening in Islamabad is all about Khan. He has been wronged, ousted through a conspiracy, and incarcerated, all while his workers and leaders have been arrested and jailed, his party bludgeoned, and his electoral victory stolen.
The anti-Khan camp believes Khan is a fascist, ruled like a dictator, is a disruptor and should be kept away. This camp, which includes many liberal intellectuals, believes that while what’s happening is unfortunate, it is also the only way to keep Khan from derailing the system.
In this debate about Khan the Messiah versus Khan the Fascist, the actual issue has consistently been lost: who wields power in this country?
Once we get to answering this question, we realise that the issue of civilian ousters doesn’t begin with Khan. We also realise that the issue of power relations has a direct bearing on our system as it has evolved but which, as most observers have noted over seven decades, has never served the people.
Unfortunately, our discourse remains partisan and reflects the binaries that come to inform peoples’ views in complex situations. Physical sciences defeated ignorance and superstition through experimentation and discoveries. Social scientists despite trying to mathematise the social sphere keep running into cul-de-sacs because, as Reinhold Niebuhr once noted, “Complete rational objectivity in a social situation is impossible.”
The popular protests that rocked Tahrir Square in Egypt began with marches, demonstrations and civil resistance on January 25, 2011. Protesters were inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, where demonstrators had succeeded in bringing down the government. By February 11, 2011, over 800 protestors had been killed, forcing Hosni Mubarak to step down.
Mubarak’s departure opened up space for a new political dispensation. Subsequently, elections resulted in a win for the Muslim Brotherhood with Mohamed Morsi elected president in June 2012. By August, Morsi had appointed Abd el-Fattah el-Sisi as commander-in-chief of the military and defence minister. This decision, among other things, was to set in motion events in Egypt that would transform the promise of the Arab Spring in that country into what political scientist Steven Cook famously called the “false dawn”.
Morsi was soon to fall foul of both the army and the Egyptian liberals. The same liberals who had earlier taken active part in the Tahrir Square demonstrations were now hobnobbing with the military. The late Egyptian writer and feminist, Nadal El Saadawi, welcomed Morsi’s ouster as a “historical revolution and not a coup d’état.” According to her, “The revolutionaries turned to the army and the army responded.”
El Saadawi repeated this to Rachel Cooke at The Observer in an interview in October 2015 when Cooke pointed out that “state killings and the numbers of government opponents languishing in prison are both dramatically on the rise.” “Not at all,” she said, stubbornly. “There is a world of difference between Mubarak and Sisi. He has got rid of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that never happened with Mubarak, or with Sadat before him.”
El-Sisi ended up imprisoning a number of liberals. And as power shifted back to the military, civil and political society was pushed back to the margins.
On February 8 the people had spoken, peacefully, legally, constitutionally and electorally. The restoration of their verdict is the only peaceful way out of the current impasse. If that restoration does not occur, we will continue to inch towards greater instability.
When democracy cannot be consolidated after a civilian disruption, we get what political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan called “pseudo-democratisation.” That is what happened in Egypt
To return to where we started, the real issue in Pakistan today goes beyond Imran Khan. Instead, the real issue is power, who exercises it, how, and to what end.
Formulated thus, the real focus is about our preferences: do we accept the army’s usurpation of power or do we believe that power must be exercised by civilian principals according to constitutional norms?
It is a matter of empirical evidence that after the vote of no confidence that ousted Khan and brought the Pakistan Democratic Movement coalition government to power, every attempt was made — and continues to be made — to ensure that Khan does not return to the political field. Every attempt was made to destroy the PTI, including through the selective use of laws and legal technicalities.
When that failed on February 8, 2024, a massive rigging exercise was undertaken to bring to power the current government. This government, which is the civilian face of a shadow military government, has since arbitrarily amended the Constitution and neutered the higher judiciary.
The only political leader that has stood up to this soft coup has been Khan. Not surprisingly, he has therefore become the immediate symbol of the struggle to restore democracy. But Khan is just the current manifestation of the power relationships in this country.
Constituted as I am, I do not like disruptions. I believe that gradualness is better than violent revolution. But history also tells us that gradualness requires some space for relatively peaceful evolution of systems and institutions. When there’s no space left for evolution, then states and societies are condemned to disruptions. Disruptions are essentially about the unknown. To paraphrase Forrest Gump, revolutions are like a box of chocolate: you never know what you’re going to get.
The current protests can be dealt with by reversing the post-February illegalities. On February 8 the people had spoken, peacefully, legally, constitutionally and electorally. The restoration of their verdict is the only peaceful way out of the current impasse.
If that restoration does not occur, we will continue to inch towards greater instability. Even if this round ultimately plays out in favour of the current hybrid regime, the question mark over this government’s legitimacy will remain. The power relationships will remain unchanged. Popular dissatisfaction will continue to simmer and erupt.
If the disruption gets worse with violence spiking, the country will become totally dysfunctional.
Either way it is a sub-Saharan recipe for disaster, not a formula for developing into a middle-income country.