On Tuesday January 30, 1962, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, a former Prime Minister of Pakistan, was arrested from his Karachi residence on ambiguous charges of anti-state activities, under the Security of Pakistan Act. His real crime, however, was opposing General Ayub Khan’s martial law regime. Sixty-two years later, on the same day and date last week, another ex-PM, Imran Khan was sentenced to a 10-year jail term, on a flimsy charge of leaking state secrets by making a diplomatic cable or cipher public. The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s famous phrase, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” or “the more things change, the more they stay the same”, has perhaps never rung truer. Like Suhrawardy, who at the time of that arrest had already been disqualified from electoral politics through the martial law regime’s Elective Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO), Imran Khan too was barred from elections last year and remains imprisoned after a conviction on corruption charges.

That’s where the similarities between Suhrawardy and Imran Khan end though. Suhrawardy was an intellectual and political giant who stood firmly for parliamentary democracy, a pluralist nation state, and refused to endorse military rule. Imran Khan, on the other hand, is an authoritarian demagogue who was handpicked, groomed, installed into the high office, and sustained there by the army till they fell out. In addition to imposing a martial law four times, the Pakistan Army has ruled indirectly for most of the country’s existence. To that end, the junta has manipulated the political process by creating or coopting what it deemed ‘patriotic’ and pliant individuals and parties. The army’s chosen politicians, however, have invariably spun out of its orbit like former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and some even locked horns with the brass, like Nawaz Sharif.

They all ultimately paid the price for standing up to the army. And Imran Khan’s fate was not going to be any different. Chairman Mao Zedong had famously said that “the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party”. The gist of Pakistan’s perennial civil-military imbalance is that those wielding the guns clearly believe that no political party – including the assorted king’s parties that they sired themselves – should ever be allowed to command the gun. So when in late 2021, then PM Imran Khan tried to assert himself and insisted on retaining his closest ally Lt. General Faiz Hameed in place as the director general of the ISI, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa stonewalled him. Never mind that General Bajwa had himself presided over Imran Khan’s installation into high office in an arrangement called the hybrid regime. By that time, Imran Khan had already been losing the confidence and support of the military establishment, largely due to a horrifying mismanagement of the economy and shoddy governance. The generals who were rightly getting blamed for imposing and sustaining the disastrous Imran Khan project, decided to change horses. The opposition political parties saw the army’s proclamation that it would stay politically neutral, as a nod to lunge at Imran Khan. In April 2022, a rainbow coalition called the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), which included the parties like the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Islam, supported by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), ousted Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party’s government through a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly. PMLN’s Shehbaz Sharif became the PDM government’s PM.

Imran Khan, however, trained his guns on General Bajwa, holding him responsible for his downfall. He also tried unsuccessfully to forestall General Asim Munir – whom he had removed as the DG ISI — becoming the new COAS. While this escalated tensions between Imran Khan and the brass, the latter remained rather restrained. But all hell broke loose when on May 9, 2023 the PTI leaders and workers rioted against military installations after Imran Khan’s arrest. Imran Khan seemed to have calculated that with pockets of support within the army, judiciary, and general public, he could bring down the army chief through a coterie of generals allied with him and also upstage the PDM government. It was a monumental miscalculation and misreading of the army’s discipline and unity of command. The army cracked its whip and thousands of PTI cadres and leaders were arrested. Imran Khan himself was rearrested and remains incarcerated since. Scores of PTI leaders were forced to repent and pledge allegiance to the army publicly and quit the party. Independent political groupings and even a new party were carved out of the PTI. Imran Khan went from being the army’s darling to its detested demon. But he remained popular with his cult-like followers, something which worried the brass deeply. The PDM government’s own dismal economic performance, lackluster leadership like Shehbaz Sharif and total subservience to the junta, didn’t exactly capture the public imagination. The generals and the PDM, which virtually served as the hybrid regime on steroids, tried every trick in the book to buy more time to manage Imran Khan. The outgoing PM Shehbaz Sharif had the National assembly dissolved a couple of days before its term ended, which pushed the due date for fresh elections to 90 instead of 60 days. The PDM appointed the army’s chosen minions to run the caretaker government, stacking the executive and administrative deck against Imran Khan. A scheduled change of guard in the Supreme Court deprived Imran Khan of his patrons in the judiciary as well. The army, which through its allied judges had shielded Imran Khan in the past in assorted legal cases, now deployed the administrative and lower courts machinery to expediate proceedings against him. On the other hand, the former three-time PM Nawaz Sharif, whom the army had gotten convicted and disqualified from politics, and was living in self-exile in London, returned and got those verdicts reversed. While the charges against Sharif were trumped-up and politically-motivated, the relief coming their way was also seen as a political rapprochement between the PML-N and the army to pave the way for his ascent to the high office for a fourth time. Nawaz Sharif, now bereft of his anti-establishment plank and shouldering the blame for the PDM’s abysmal performance, however, needed more time to reconnect with and reenergize his base. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) delayed the polls citing a requirement to redraw the voting districts following an updated census.

While the PMLN, the PPP and other parties finally got their election campaigns off the ground, the army was simply not ready to leave anything to chance. The brass wanted even the remotest possibility of Imran Khan’s electoral victory or even a respectable loss, vanished. And the ECP obliged and stripped the PTI of its iconic election symbol – a cricket bat — on the technical grounds that it had not held intra-party elections. In a country with an abysmal literacy rate and preponderance of rural constituencies, an election symbol carries both brand value and polling-day utility. The ECP’s decision was clearly a ploy to undermine both. The Peshawar High Court overruled the ECP decision and restored the PTI’s election symbol, only to be overruled by the SCP. The otherwise well-respected Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa was widely criticized for a verdict that stood on very thin techno-legal ice. Without its leader who had been forced out of the chairmanship due to his legal predicament and an election symbol, the PTI, though not legally banned, was pushed out of the contest as an organized party. A bruised and battered PTI still managed to field a large number of candidates, who were now forced to run as independents and were whimsically given a confusing assortment of election symbols by the ECP. The army, however, was not satisfied still.

A day after the verdict in the cipher case, Imran Khan and his wife were given a 14-year prison term on charges of misappropriating from the Tosha Khanastate repository, several gifts he had received while in the office. But two major strikes against Imran Khan in two days were still not enough for the army. Imran Khan and his wife were fined and condemned to seven years in prison, on one of the most ludicrous and sleazy charges in Pakistan’s checkered judicial history. The couple were charged with contracting their marriage in violation of a Islamic requirement of a post-divorce waiting period called Iddah before which a woman is not supposed to remarry. The army and its henchmen in judiciary were plumbing new depths. Whatever the veracity of the allegations might be, but the unholy haste with which the kangaroo courts delivered these rapid-fire verdicts point to the army’s desire to seal Imran Khan’s electoral fate totally and irrevocably. Through these three verdicts, the army sought to paint Imran Khan as a national security risk, as well as a financially and morally corrupt leader, who not only stands a zero chance in this election but in the foreseeable future as well. There are other legal cases pending against Imran Khan, including those pertaining to the rioting against military installations, which could be expedited, especially, in the unlikely event of the PTI-backed candidates somehow mustering a victory on February 8. In that case, an eventual government reference to the SC seeking to ban the PTI remains well within the realm of possibility. At the time of this writing, the election campaign has ended in Pakistan, but the crackdown against the PTI workers and hounding of its rump leadership and potential voters continues unabated. Calls such as from the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urging the Pakistani authorities to ensure a free and fair election, are too little and too late. While the pre-polls rigging by keeping the PTI from running as party and crippling its electoral machinery should be enough to deliver the army’s desired verdict, an election-day tinkeringcannot be ruled out.   

Assuming that the army has successfully vanquished Imran Khan come February 9, Pakistan will be looking at yet another civilian dispensation beholden to the junta. Nawaz Sharif, seen by many as the frontrunner, had started off by challenging the junta over its misadventures like the Imran Khan project. But along this campaign trail he chose to hold his silence over the army’s disastrous role in political engineering, while castigating the judges responsible for his 2017 ouster. The PMLN, and for that matter, the PPP or any other political party’s calculus seems to be that by confronting army over its political machinations, they risk falling out of favor with the brass. The army, for its part, has always had a penchant for introducing or picking multiple players and factions in the political arena. The tactic is conducive to the army’s strategic objective of retaining the ultimate power by coopting the politicians who, in turn, compete for its benefaction. The moment the collaborators of today try to assert themselves, they are trotted out and replaced with whoever is ready to do the army’s bidding at the time.  Samuel Finer has noted in The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics that “politically the armed forces suffer from two crippling weaknesses, which preclude them, save in exceptional cases and for brief periods of time, from running without civilian collaboration and openly in their own name … one weakness is the armed forces’ technical inability to administer any but the most primitive community. The second is their lack of legitimacy: that is to say their lack of moral title to rule”.  Pakistan’s foremost human rights defender, the late and much-lamented Asma Jehangir had put it much more simply, when she stated that the army’s generals are dangerous duffers out to ruin Pakistan. And by accounts of General Asim Munir’s interactions with the students at home and the Pakistani diaspora in Washington, D.C., Asma Apawas on the dot. One participant of the D.C. meeting described General Munir as an intellectual flyweight who underwhelmed the audience by his half-baked geopolitical views anchored in religious certitude and cliché verses that he misattributed to Pakistan’s national poet Allama Iqbal. Be that as it may, General Asim Munir, however, serves the army’s institutional imperatives and his sophomoric intellect, would matter very little.

What remains of profound concern is that the Pakistan Army, which considers itself the final arbiter of patriotism, national interest and the ultimate framer and executer of foreign and national security policies, has used the Imran Khan and PDM hybrid regimes to make a power and governance grab not seen since 1958 when General Ayub Khan imposed the country’s first martial law. The army got the PDM government to give constitutional and legal cover to its business enterprises and sweeping powers to its intelligence agencies. The army is much more deeply entrenched today than it was on the eve of 2018 elections. While the PMLN and the PPP made no mention of the civil-military relations, foreign policy, the simmering conflict in Balochistan and the disastrous security situation in several Pashtun regions, during the elections campaign, these are realities that would have to be grappled with. The army with its burgeoning business empire, a voracious appetite for budgetary allocations, and now a constitutionally-sanctioned seat at the economic policy table, is more deeply involved than ever in the fiscal affairs as well. Manifestos and rhetoric of the political parties, including the PTI’s, however, sounded more like a wish list rather than policy prescriptions for the deep economic crisis that Pakistan is in. Whoever forms the government will be dictated to by the army sitting atop the tutelary commanding heights. History, however, informs us that even the weakest PMs like Muhammad Khan Junejo and Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali ended up having differences with the strongest army dictators, General Ziaul Haq and General Pervez Musharraf, respectively. Nawaz Sharif himself was ousted thrice by the army when he tried to assert his constitutional authority. The power dynamics of the de jure authority and de facto rulers is such that once in the office, the former invariably seeks agency that’s due their moral title. What follows is the replacement of old collaborators with the new ones. And it won’t be any different this time regardless of whether the army plans to consort with the new dispensation for 10 days or 10 years in the so-called Bangladesh model of a diarchal controlled democracy. None of this is lost on Imran Khan’s political opponents and the army with which they have made a common cause. But they still chose to destroy democracy in order to save it from Imran Khan.

Pakistan has a long history of rigged elections and manufactured mandates. This election would rank right up there with the 1985 party-less vote under General Zia-ul-Haq and the 2002 polls under General Musharraf and would have equally disastrous consequences lasting an equally long period, if not more.

That Imran Khan is a vindictive demagogue who had hounded not just his foes but friends as well and sought to perpetuate himself in the office through undemocratic means, is not moot. But even he should have had a fair judicial trial as well as a fair chance in the court of public opinion. Pakistan has long history of rigged elections and manufactured mandates. This election would rank right up there with the 1985 party-less vote under General Zia-ul-Haq and the 2002 polls under General Musharraf and would have equally disastrous consequences lasting an equally long period, if not more. The way the army has manipulated the executive, parliamentary, judicial, and electoral machinery to keep Imran Khan out, hasn’t just undermined those very institutions for here and now; it has set the stage for instability and political chaos for years to come. Pakistan’s already dysfunctional democracy has been dealt a near-fatal blow. What’s past is prologue; no matter who wins the elections, it is the military who will rule the roost. 

Mohammad Taqi

The writer is a Pakistani-American columnist and commentator. He tweets @mazdaki.

The post Here’s Why The Results Of Today’s Elections Are Totally Irrelevant appeared first on Dissent Today.

With Pakistan’s general elections just three days away, the powerful military establishment’s unconstitutional interference is casting a dark shadow over the process and undermining its legitimacy. A review of Pakistan’s electoral history unfortunately shows a recurrence of such rigging, with hardly any of our national elections being fully free and fair. Pakistan has spent over a decade under direct army rule in this mode (1.5 years under Ayub Khan, 2.5 years under Yahya Khan, eight years under Zia ul Haq, and three years under Pervez Musharraf). Even when national elections were subsequently held, they were usually rigged in one way or another.

Pakistan’s first National Assembly was formed following the partition in 1947 that divided the all-India assembly created after the 1946 elections. Members of the National Assembly were elected indirectly by the provincial assemblies. However, Liaquat Ali Khan was not elected as the Prime Minister by the assembly but was appointed to the position by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was serving as the President of the Muslim League at the time. Subsequently, Liaquat Ali urged the UK government to appoint Jinnah as the Governor-General.

Assuming that it was following a five-year term, fresh National Assembly elections should have been held by 1951-52, but they were postponed while several Prime Ministers were illegally appointed and fired by an unelected Governor-General. Even that post was filled by appointment rather than elections within assemblies. A second national assembly was elected in 1955 but indirectly, with the provincial assemblies (some of them emerging from rigged elections) serving as the electoral college rather than direct elections based on universal adult franchise.

Several provincial assemblies were dissolved questionably by the Governor-General.

This facade was finally dismantled after the 1958 Martial Law. However, the pressure to establish electoral legitimacy quickly arose, prompting him to introduce his Basic Democracy system, in which 80,000 local legislators were elected through direct elections. Instead of utilizing universal adult franchise for direct elections, he chose to have himself elected as President in a referendum in which these local legislators acted as the electoral college in 1960 for a five-year term.

In 1965, he repeated this exercise with the only change being that Presidential elections included a competitor, Fatima Jinnah. However, the electoral college still consisted of only local legislators. Similarly, elections to the National Assembly in 1962 and 1965 also utilized the same electoral college. In short, no direct national elections were held based on universal franchise for the National Assembly or President/Governor-Generals.

Prime Ministers were typically appointed and dismissed by the Governor-Generals during the first two decades after 1947.

During this era, election delays, manipulation of the electoral college, and dubious appointments and removals of Prime Ministers and Heads of State were the main methods of election rigging.

The main motivation for rigging during this era was the fear held by West Pakistani elites of the numerical majority of Bengalis. The 1970 elections, which featured universal adult franchise, marked the end of this era of indirect elections. These elections are widely recognized as Pakistan’s most fair elections in terms of pre-election and election-day processes. However, their legitimacy was compromised when power was not transferred to the Awami League at the post-election stage, confirming the West Pakistan elite’s worries about a Bengali majority.

The 15 national parliamentary elections that have taken place in Pakistan so far did not fare much better. As mentioned earlier, the first four, held between 1946 and 1965, were all based on indirect elections by provincial or local legislators. In 1970, power was not handed over to the winner. The 1977 election, the only national parliamentary one to be held under an incumbent elected civilian government (PPP), was marred by serious rigging charges such as candidate intimidation, vote stuffing, and media censorship.

While detailed reviews by neutral election observers are not available for these elections, it is generally believed that they increased PPP’s victory margin from a majority to a supermajority. The 1985 elections were held without party representation under army rule, with PPP’s main leaders either in jail or exile, and were highly rigged. The 1988 elections were partially fair, although PPP’s victory margin was likely reduced by selective rigging by the establishment.

However, the elections in 1990, 1993, and 1997 are generally considered rigged. Of the seven elections held from 1970 to 1999, six were rigged to the extent of changing the final victor, while one was partially rigged (1988). Only one of the assemblies (1972-77) completed its term, whereas the other six were dubiously removed through martial law (1977 and 1997) or Presidential dismissals.

The next phase of elections resumed in 2002 after three years of direct army rule and four more parliamentary elections were held, with European Union election observation reports available for each. The reports suggest that the establishment rigging changed the final winner in 2002 and 2018, as well as reduced the PPP’s victory margin in 2008. There is no hint of deliberate rigging in the 2013 elections, although the PPP, ANP, and other centrist parties did not have a level playing field as they were targeted by Taliban
terrorism, which reduced their victory margin without changing the overall winner (PML-N).

Out of the fifteen Presidential and national parliamentary polls held through direct voting since 1947, eleven have been rigged to the extent of changing the final outcome, two were rigged to reduce the victor’s margin (in 1988 and 2008), one was rigged to enhance the victor’s margin (in 1977), and only one was free of deliberate rigging by the establishment or contestants which was in 2013. This marked the only free and fair civilian transfer of power from one fairly elected party to another in our history.

In short, 13 elections were rigged by the establishment and only one by civilians (1977) and that regime lasted only a few months.

The 1970 polls are widely recognized as Pakistan’s fairest elections in terms of pre-election and election-day processes. However, their legitimacy was compromised when power was not transferred to the Awami League.

The 2024 elections

All the telltale signs of rigging present in past parliamentary elections are already visible now before the 2024 elections. This includes the dismissal of the PTI government in a tussle with the establishment in April 2022, and subsequent institution of dubious cases against its top leadership and their arrest without convictions for a long time (Imran Khan, Shah Mahmood and Pervez Elahi). Imran Khan was recently convicted in three dubious cases in a week for a total of 21 years of incarceration through secretive in-prison trials, just days before the elections.

There have been forced or induced desertions by Asad Umar and hundreds of other middle-cadre PTI leaders and workers, often after their incarceration and disappearance and subsequent release. There are media gags and obstructions in the way of the party’s free electioneering reported regularly by media and on social media. In a first, PTI has even been deprived of its election symbol, which may open the doors for forced desertion of its independently running candidates to other parties.

The 2024 elections appear to be more rigged than those held in 2018 and the 1990s, and on par with the 2002 and 1985 elections held under army rule. The establishment has perfected its rigging techniques to the point where it can manipulate elections even under a constitutional rule. In the past, Pakistan was able to get away with significant rigging due to its status as a key US ally during the wars in Afghanistan. It remains to be seen whether western states will tolerate the same level of rigging now that Pakistan is not a key ally.

Recent opinion surveys show that PML-N is gaining ground, which seems odd given the poor economic situation during its recent rule. It also appears that PTI’s fall in such survey is linked to the crackdown on the party, which is forcing electables and voter blocs to switch their loyalties. However, these surveys suggest that we will see a rigged, weak, and inept PML-N coalition coming to power. Such a coalition will lack the legitimacy needed to tackle Pakistan’s multifaceted, colossal issues in governance, and will be subservient to the establishment, whose rigging will help it come to power.

Pakistan’s social, economic, foreign, and security failures are inevitably linked to its political failures. These political failures are undoubtedly connected to the problem of political illegitimacy due to rampant election delays and rigging. The 2024 elections seem to perpetuate that cycle of political illegitimacy and massive problems in all other domains. For this sorry state, the blame mostly lies with the security establishment.

Dr Niaz Murtaza

The writer is an Islamabad-based Political Economist with a Ph.D. From the University of
California, Berkeley. He can be reached at murtazaniaz@yahoo.com. X:@NiazMurtaza2.

The post Explainer: Why Is Every Election In Pakistan Marred By Rigging Allegations? appeared first on Dissent Today.

The recent sentencing of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, for contracting their marriage during the latter’s post-divorce Iddat period, has triggered political outrage. Khan is reported to have claimed that ‘this marks the first instance in history where a case related to iddat has been initiated’. Populists are not just skilled mythmakers – they’re often seduced by their own myths at the cost of political reasoning.

Of course, this is not the first case of state intervention in ‘private’ matters of marriage and sexual relations; British colonial and postcolonial Islamic judicial reasonings have consistently colluded and strengthened patriarchal strangleholds over Pakistani women’s consent, choice and agency (especially, sexual and marital).

From 1979, General Zia ul Haq instituted gender apartheid in the 80s and 90s when Islam was invoked to enable men’s legal, social control over marital rights and sexual dominance over women.

The Zina Ordinance (Adultery, Fornication) decimated the concept of sexual consent, enabled men to cast wrongful accusations of adultery on their wives with flimsy or no evidence and, even the admission of sexual violation of a woman, if unproven or if pregnancy resulted from the rape, could be taken as self-indicting evidence of committing the crime of adultery or illicit fornication.

Forty years of advocacy against the Zina laws resulted in constant allegations against protesting feminists and women’s rights activists as “foreign agents”, “westoxified elite women”, “enlightenment dupes”, “orientalist anti-Islamic demons” and “compromised NGO/civil society liberals”. Complicit in this patriarchal view was Imran Khan who abstained, along with the Islamists boycott, from voting to reform the Zina Ordinance. It was due to the votes of the opposition party of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that the Musharraf government managed to pass the Women’s Protection Bill of 2006.

Confessing political complicity

Historical amnesia is a dangerous disease suffered by many millennial PTI supporters and this only widens the democracy deficit. The projection that state persecution of the PTI’s leadership is uniquely vicious, or that the party is constitutionally committed, anti-establishment and anti-elite, is text-book mythos over logos. In fact, it has been the politics of populist piety and not democracy, that was perfectly coupled under the governance of Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra, who he characterized repeatedly as ‘spiritual and domestic’.

Quite disconnected from his personal journey of pietist redemption, in 2018, ably assisted by the Jamaat e Islami, Imran Khan enthusiastically weaponized the piety clause 63 A of the constitution to disqualify PM Nawaz Sharif. He repeated such a ‘gaming of the constitution’ by barring 25 legislators from voting for a Chief Minister candidate from the opposition party in the Punjab Assembly in 2022. Intra-party elections in the PTI have been controversial since the time of Justice Wajih and split the party even before it was dharna-lifted into power by the establishment in 2018.

It has been the politics of populist piety and not democracy, that was perfectly coupled under the governance of Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra, who he characterized repeatedly as ‘spiritual and domestic’.

The most damning evidence of Khan’s pro-establishment credentials has been his regime’s exoneration of the indicted demagogue, (late) General Musharraf who defiled the constitution and sold the country in the war on terror and who this honest civilian premier had a chance to hold accountable through judicial process.

In 2018, Khan also rewarded another chief with a constitutionally dicey extension. Apparently, ‘anti-establishment’ depends on how anti the establishment is against you on any given day.

Dual standards

The political culture between 2018-2022 was dominated by fake news, innuendo, gendered attacks and piety performances. Under Khan’s governance, the red herring of financial corruption was provided by video and audio exposes of sexual indiscretions of opposition politicians. Sex and money were shaken into a political cocktail. YouTube tabloids offered peepholes into the personal affairs of opposition politicians yet, there were no PTI objections over privacy or propriety back then.

The public scrutiny of all politicians has heightened due to the use of social media – the elasticity of the public-private boundary has been stretched by this generation of social media political activists themselves. It’s baffling that, despite their proud manipulation of social media for political ends, the current PTI rhetoric pretends that Khan and Bushra are the exclusive and innocent victims of the weaponization of sexual politics.

For over a decade, Benazir Bhutto remained the target of vicious sexism – often within her own cabinet – and carried the ignominies targeted at her spouse, too. Lack of photoshop or AI technology did not prevent the spread of political porn even at that time.

Despite their proud manipulation of social media for political ends, the current PTI rhetoric pretends that Khan and Bushra are the exclusive and innocent victims of the weaponization of sexual politics.

Women remain the markers and symbols and physical targets of moral panics around the tryst of Muslim women’s sexuality. The focus on abstract morality and women’s fitna potential are a deliberate method to bury material and political equal rights of women. Inspired by such fears, male judicial sympathy for men’s fragile fears of being cuckolded and their cynical use of the law and religion remain firmly intact.

The gendered cost of faith-based politics

While piety may be about the self and inward, the politics of piety or religion are, by definition, public and instrumental. Khan preached morality that galvanized a generation that adulates him for his past picadillo performances, as much as his pious promises of turning Pakistan into a Riyasat e Medina.

As in all matters, the standard for lapse of self-righteous Muslim men in Pakistan is much lower than that for women, and the legal and moral impunity extended to them is much higher. Male leaders, military and civilian, have enjoyed lives of blatant indiscretions but former PM, Imran Khan, is arguably the most successful beneficiary of moral flex, separation of the personal from political, and the privilege to preach to the nation about vice, corruptive effects of film and arts, women’s rights as cultural alienation, on nepotism, clientelism and improprieties in office and, in his use of the religion card in politics.

However, none of this would be possible without Bushra Bibi – Khan’s redemption as the pious subject was very much enabled by the spiritual patronage of Bushra. When it suited this male-defined Islamic republic, Khan’s hypermasculinity remained immune to iddat requirements, improprietous haste, shrine prostrating and sexist thinking. His rumoured sexual transgressions and alleged spousal oneirocentric revelations about official appointments were defended in a way that no woman leader could expect or survive. His populism has politically mobilized more women than other parties or non-governmental movement in recent times, without offering any specific gender-based rewards, policies, or rights.

While Khan remains moral Teflon, the recent turn in narrative directed at the former first lady, Bushra Imran, reveals the tenuous placement of piety performance if she doesn’t maintain the male-defined Madonna gold standard. Since piety is exclusively about virtue, the risk of worldly or material compromises is high but moral lapses – even illogical ones like the incompletion of the iddat period for a woman in her 50s – elicits a very high price.

Piety politics, like all politics, is of course, performative and competitive and not some inward, discreet self-defining underground journey, as romanticized in recent scholarship. The pious are deeply invested in social norms such as purdah and observing sexual modesty and iddat rituals.

Dishing out moral condemnation boomerangs at the first opportunity precisely because there is no consistency.

Panic over immorality becomes personal when virtue is tied to religious belief rather than (secular) political ethical standards. It’s not consistent to have a leader use religious references, perform piety, cite divine purposes and conjoin religion with politics but refute the realm of punitive religious laws as ‘personal’ or ‘private’. That would qualify as secular laws and state.

No lesson learned

Today, the unrepentant Imran Khan and his injured followers show no signs of reconciliation or democratic collectivism. They ride the crest of moral indignation laced with the kind of piety that only qualifies them as first and exclusive civilian victims and mock and accuse anyone who remains sceptical, as collaborator and state sell-out. Refusing to acknowledge that Khan was the willing disciple and henchman for the Establishment, they sneer at human rights activists for not directing all their energies for PTI’s “real” democrats. The anti-democratic nature of exceptionalizing a party and its leader is not sinking in. Ironically, they insist that PTI associated women are entitled to the same feminist attention and activism that they discredited, demeaned and delegitimized for four years but offer no such support or collectivism in return – only snideness, moral exclusion and judgement.

Imran Khan’s followers insist that PTI-associated women are entitled to the same feminist attention and activism that they discredited and delegitimized for four years, but offer no such support or collectivism in return – only snideness and moral exclusion.

However, the youth bulge in Pakistan in the new millennium was never some lumpen blindly following a pious pied piper – it is gendered, globalized and even queer. Overlapping Khan’s election, a new wave of feminist intent arose comprising those who reject such imposed piety, virtuousity, modesty, propriety and insist instead, on pride, visibility and sexual autonomy.

This means that Pakistani women’s aspirations for equality and fundamental rights have increasingly narrowed to just two strategic options; the first is repentance, conformity and domestication (the kind that Khan glorifies as typified by his wife) which offer the consolation prize of secondary status and heavenly reward; the other is gendered, sexual and political defiance – which invites the risks of social and actual death and inspires persistent moral panic.

The contemporary generation witnessed how social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch pioneered the departure from the earlier practice of the pious disguise required of women celebrities who played out their on-screen scripted Madonna/Whore roles in their actual lives. Qandeel subverted the male notions of honor and shame and paid the price with her life. On the other hand, those women celebrities and artists who have taken the path of repentance have profited from the politics of piety. Veena Malik, Maria B, Mishi Khan and others become foot soldiers of the state and patriarchy by peddling a conservative gendered order. Then they wonder how the state weaponizes the war on women?

Which path?

After decades of state suppression, conservative backlash, and liberal hopes hinged to the promise of piety, the sexual politics of a new generation has rudely unsettled Pakistan’s gendered moral order. Moorat and Aurat March have become the vehicles for protest and celebration of sexual identities. Haya Marches and pious women’s movements celebrate abstinence, modesty and gender apartheid. Which one is the natural alliance in the Iddat case today? Why are PTI hardliners calling on feminists’ and not on pious women’s organisations to extend support to their leader? Do they now concede and support that ‘mera jisam meri marzi’ is the right of a woman to consent or refuse matters relating to her choices in ‘private’ matters and that the state and male guardian have no jurisdiction over these?

Further, if the objection is the targeted humiliation of Imran Khan and Bushra Imran, then does this imply that the lower class of men and women do not deserve our daily outrage at their routine humiliation at the hands of state and community gate-keepers of morality who police the sexual autonomies of women with exceptional zeal?

In a classic staging of the common practice of divorce blackmail and revenge, Bushra’s ex-husband, Khawar Maneka perjured himself by first insisting his pious ex-wife was pure and spiritual and later characterized her as the unfaithful, disobedient nashuz. Such deployment enables law to serve as a tool of controlling women’s choice and denying their free will in matters of marriage.

The lesson is clear – the hybrid middle-path approach of interpreting Islamic laws in a progressive light will not stabilize the personal or social rights of Pakistanis and women and civilians will pay the gendered cost of this, repeatedly.

It’s time for the outraged to extend their conscientious objection for ALL women, genders and exploited classes without discrimination and with historical objectivity, rather than spreading moral panic, practicing selective piety politics or, supporting anti-democratic populism.

Afiya Shehrbano Zia

The writer is a feminist researcher and activist based in Karachi. She is the author of “Faith and Feminism in Pakistan” and several published articles on women, secularism and religion

The post Is Imran-Bushra Iddat Case A Feminist Issue? appeared first on Dissent Today.

Any comment on the upcoming elections in Pakistan must begin with an unequivocal acknowledgement that these polls are going to be neither free nor fair.

For months, the military establishment has worked behind the scenes to ensure a result that aligns with its interests, relying on a pliant caretaker administration and the courts to engage in a wave of repression primarily targeted at the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The creation of new “king’s” parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, comprised of defectors from the PTI, the incarceration of the party’s leaders and activists, and curbs on the media, all are indicative of the kind of pre-poll rigging that is routinely employed to shape electoral outcomes.

The conviction of former prime minister Imran Khan and party stalwart Shah Mehmood Qureshi in the so-called ‘cipher’ case, just a week before polling day, must also be seen in this context. Many observers agree the case against Khan is flimsy but believing these proceedings have anything to do with legal principles is naïve; if anything, the dubious processes used to convict former prime ministers for allegedly undeclared income or the dissemination of ‘official secrets’ demonstrates how these cases are simply pretexts for eliminating those deemed to be politically undesirable.

Some may argue that what is happening today is no different, in principle, from what happened in 2018. Then, the elected PML-N government was essentially hounded out of office as the military sought to install Imran Khan and the PTI as more pliant governing partners. Indeed, many will recall how Khan and the military repeatedly emphasized they were on the ‘same page’ as part of a hybrid regime. It is also true that once in power, Imran Khan and his party displayed authoritarian tendencies, including cracking down on opposition and dissent, that undermined the slow progress Pakistan was making towards democratization.

None of that, however, can serve as justification for the political manipulation we are currently witnessing. Since the 1950s, the principal impediment to democratization in Pakistan has been the military and its constant interventions in politics. Imran Khan and the PTI were a symptom, not the cause, of Pakistan’s political malaise, and replacing one hybrid regime with another is not reason for celebration. As noted by many of the party’s critics, the crackdown on the PTI is neither unprecedented nor is it the most severe in Pakistan’s history, but that does not excuse it. If anything, it is yet another reminder of just how predictable and cyclical Pakistan’s politics is; once again, as was the case in the 1950s, the 1990s, and the 2000s, we are witnessing little more than a rearrangement of the political chessboard with the military picking and choosing partners it hopes will be aligned with its interests.

For months, the military establishment has worked behind the scenes to ensure a result that aligns with its interests, relying on a pliant caretaker administration and the courts to engage in a wave of repression primarily targeted at the PTI.

Those inclined to take a more charitable view of current events might suggest that undoing the hybrid project of 2018 necessitates the measures that are currently being taken by the military establishment, not least of all because there are elements within the military itself that were and are sympathetic to the PTI. Following from this, it is also suggested Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N more generally, and other parties like the PPP may take a more anti-establishment stance once in power. Having dealt with the supposedly existential threat posed by the PTI, it is argued, these parties will make use of the space available to them to push back against the military and strengthen civilian democratic institutions.

This, however, may be little more than wishful thinking. If the elections yield a result in which no party has a clear majority – the most likely outcome – independents and smaller parties will wield effective veto power enabling the military establishment to rely on ‘parliamentary’ measures to keep the government in check. The fractured and opportunistic nature of the political elite, within and across parties, also means that the military will likely continue to exert influence using its old tricks – court cases, defections, engineered protests by groups like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), and so on. If recent history is anything to go by, those within the PML-N and PPP inclined to take a more confrontational approach to their relationship with the military will find themselves sidelined by their own parties.

Perhaps more importantly, it is necessary to recognize that for all the sound and fury of the elections and the drama surrounding them, there are some structural regularities that will remain in place regardless of who comes to power. All the mainstream parties, without exception, act as little more than vehicles for the protection and articulation of elite interests. On questions of policy, for example, there is little daylight between the parties – particularly when comparing their actual records in office – and there is scant evidence to suggest there are new ideas or commitments to reform that will help Pakistan navigate the difficult times ahead. The blueprint for governance remains the same; reliance on external donors for funding, illusory ‘growth’ fueled by aid, inability and/or reluctance to tax (or in any way inconvenience) the rich, and the abdication of foreign and internal security policy to a military whose primary motivation remains the collection of geo-political rents and safeguarding its own corporate interests. Whatever the outcome in February, there is little reason to expect any meaningful change to the dysfunctional civil-military dynamic that has brought Pakistan to this point.

If there is any cause for optimism, it is to be found outside the rigged arena of mainstream electoral competition. In Balochistan, tens of thousands continue to march against and protest enforced disappearances. Organizations like the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), Aurat March, and progressive student groups continue to mobilize against the state’s excesses. Even in the electoral arena, smaller parties, like the Haqooq-e-Khalq party, and their candidates, offer the promise of radical, progressive change aimed at producing a more inclusive, democratic, and equal Pakistan. Online, despite the curbs imposed by the state, an extremely young and dynamic citizenry continues to evade attempts to police what they can see and say, mobilizing and making use of memes, satire, and other media to have their voices heard. The military establishment and its ever-changing cast of allies will not stop trying to impose their will on Pakistan but they are ultimately fighting a losing battle.

Hassan Javid

The writer was previously an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and is currently based at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, Canada.

The post Neither Free, Nor Fair: The 2024 Elections in Pakistan appeared first on Dissent Today.

In theory, Pakistan is a federal parliamentary democracy, which elects its representatives through universal adult franchise. Joint electorates which were restored in 2002 mean that all citizens of Pakistan should be placed on the same electoral rolls regardless of their faith. This is true for almost all citizens, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs etc., except one community which is placed on a separate list for no plausibly rational reason: the Ahmadi community.

Ahmadis are placed on a supplementary “non-Muslim” list and thus subject to state sponsored discrimination. In 2002, when the joint electorate was restored through an executive order, the then military regime, which otherwise portrayed itself as the bastion of enlightened moderation, placed Ahmadis on this separate list, telling Ahmadis that this was a minor concession to the Mullahs. It was not just a minor concession though because it hit at the root of the idea of citizenship in Pakistan, because from then on Ahmadis are the only other in citizenship category, given that none of the other communities, Muslim or non-Muslim, are placed on a separate list.

Declared non-Muslim for the purposes of law and constitution through a constitutional amendment in 1974, Ahmadis have faced systematic denial of their fundamental rights guaranteed to them under the constitution as citizens, including their right to cast their votes in a general election.

Ahmadis believe that they are Muslims and Article 20 of the Constitution does allow them the right to believe they are, even if the state considers them non-Muslim for the purposes of law and constitution.  Since they believe they are Muslims and have the same names as official Muslims, they somehow are deemed to pose a threat to the faith of the majority by merely being on the same list. Hence, they alone must be placed on this supplementary non-Muslim list. In other words, they can vote only if they accept that they are non-Muslim. To reiterate, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs etc. are placed on the main rolls with Muslims.

Consequently, the Ahmadis have once again decided to boycott the elections this year citing this unconscionable discrimination which, they say in a press release issued by the Anjuman-e-Ahmadiyya, militates against not just the constitutional scheme which speaks of equality but the solemn promises of equality of citizenship that Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah made to all citizens of Pakistan, Muslim or non-Muslim.

Joint electorates which were restored in 2002 mean that all citizens of Pakistan should be placed on the same electoral rolls regardless of their faith. But Ahmadis are placed on a supplementary “non-Muslim” list and thus subject to state-sponsored discrimination.

Supporters of the separate list for Ahmadis and the ensuing discriminatory practices contend that since Ahmadis do not acknowledge their classification as non-Muslims according to the constitution, they should be deemed ineligible for the fundamental rights enshrined in that very constitution. This is a very dangerous argument to make and is patently wrong. Disagreeing with constitutional provisions is neither illegal nor unconstitutional. This is why there is a process to introduce a constitutional amendment. Every time you amend the Constitution, you are actually disagreeing with some part of it. It is therefore perfectly constitutional to disagree with the 2nd Amendment. It is perfectly constitutional to espouse the idea that one day Pakistanis will have the collective wisdom to undo it. The Constitution of Pakistan does not require an Ahmadi to accept that he or she is a non-Muslim. It states that for the purposes of the Law and Constitution, Ahmadis are non-Muslim, which means that an Ahmadi cannot hold the office of the President or Prime Minister.

The right of an Ahmadi to reject the second amendment, however, is protected by Article 20 as well as the Objectives Resolution. The notion that Ahmadis will be granted their rights as citizens only if they concede their non-Muslim status, is an untenable proposition. Conversely, even if Ahmadis were to acquiesce to this demand, some might subsequently insist on labeling them as Murtad or apostates. Ultimately, this amounts to calling forth a flood.  Ahmadis’ resistance to their pigeonholing into the non-Muslim category is actually a very needed push back to the idea that the state can decide who is a Muslim and who is not.

This question aside, the denial of franchise on the basis of a theological question is out of step with the idea of a nation state in 21^st century. While there are states that confine citizenship to one group or the other or make citizenship rights contingent on religious or ethnic considerations, those states are no models to emulate. As the Supreme Court of Pakistan held in the Tahir Naqqash case in 2022, the Pakistani constitution does not disavow Ahmadis as citizens and therefore the state is bound to accord to them equal rights regardless of their status as Muslims or Non-Muslims. The Constitution of 1973 states in 106(2):

“A person shall be entitled to vote if-

(a)       he is a citizen of Pakistan;

(b)       he is not less than eighteen years of age;

(c)       his name appears on the electoral roll; and

(d)       he is not declared by a competent court to be of unsound mind.”

Furthermore, Pakistan is bound by its international covenants to accord this right.  Article 21 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights states:

“Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.”

Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that Pakistan ratified in 2010 states:

“Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions:

(a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen

representatives;

(b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by

universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the

free expression of the will of the electors”

The question of faith therefore cannot arise when determining electoral rolls. Every citizen ought to be on the same roll without exception.  As things stand, Ahmadis are excluded from this basic exercise of citizenship and this violates Pakistan’s international obligations. Technically this would be enough to strip Pakistan of its GSP+ status and other preferential trade deals that have been linked to the country’s fulfillment of these obligations. The problem is easily fixable (put everyone on the same list) but the state seems utterly powerless against extremists that drive this popular discrimination.

Yasser Latif Hamdani

The writer is an advocate of the high courts of Pakistan and author of ‘Jinnah: A Life.’

The post Pakistan Is Violating Its International Obligations By Excluding Ahmadis From Elections appeared first on Dissent Today.

As Pakistan prepares for its general elections, the stage is set not only for a political showdown but also for a test of its democratic resilience. The omnipresent influence of the military establishment in the political arena casts a long shadow on the credibility of the electoral process. Coupled with the strategic maneuverings of political players like Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insad (PTI), Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League – N (PML-N), and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), this paints a complex picture of Pakistan’s democratic journey.

Imran Khan, who was once favored by the military, is now trying to save his party from an imminent electoral defeat following a very public and nasty fallout between him and his benefactor generals. Like Khan, Sharif has also learned the hard way that aligning with the establishment only works in their favor. Although their alliance may be short-lived, they should make the most of it.

The Bhutto-Zardaris know when it’s best to sit out of the game and when to seize an opportunity. The rest of the players choose their positions based on their assessment of the situation. All the players are waiting to see which side the establishment leans toward in the election.

The historical interference of Pakistan’s military establishment intertwines with the political process and discourse so intricately that it seems impossible to separate them. From orchestrating coups to subtly manipulating the civilian facade, the military has mastered the art of shaping and controlling the country’s political destiny. This interference was particularly evident before the 2018 elections when Khan and his party benefited from the military’s support.

This ongoing interference is once again evident, with the aim to manipulate the outcome of the upcoming elections by undermining Khan and the PTI. However, the credibility of the elections is also in question due to the media strategy and propaganda techniques used by the PTI. It is clear that Khan knows he cannot win the elections, so his best bet is to discredit the entire process. The military establishment, by interfering with the process and targeting the PTI’s campaign, is unintentionally helping Khan.

The essence of a functional democracy lies in the integrity of its electoral process and the protection of human rights. The military’s interference in politics not only compromises freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary, but it also restricts the democratic space by suppressing dissent. This environment not only undermines the fairness of the elections but also has broader implications for human rights, creating an atmosphere of fear and control.

Political parties should not stay silent on these issues solely because the target is a populist leader like Imran Khan. Khan has effectively used violations of constitutional rights and civil liberties to his advantage, portraying himself as a victim of the system and a crusader against undue military influence. This narrative is resonating with a significant portion of the population, particularly among the youth and urban voters.

The narrative of PTI’s persecution plays a significant role in the current political discourse. PTI supporters view the party’s challenges as a result of the establishment’s machinations, and the PTI strengthens this perception through propaganda tactics. This tactic benefits Khan by mobilizing his base and providing him with a scapegoat if the election results are unfavorable.

The PML-N also has a complex relationship with the military. Although once seen as an ally, confrontations between PML-N and the military have occurred from 2014 to 2020. In the current political landscape, PML-N seems to normalize the military’s interference in politics, which is particularly evident in the context of PTI’s persecution.

The upcoming elections are more than a routine exercise; they are a referendum on Pakistan’s democratic values and commitment to human rights.

Sharif’s approach to dealing with PTI and Khan walks a fine line between political rivalry and collusion with the establishment. This complicity perpetuates the military’s influence in politics. Although the party claims to adopt a strategy of “political pragmatism,” many of its supporters have voiced concern over this collusion and how it might affect the party’s approval ratings.

The upcoming elections are more than a routine exercise; they are a referendum on Pakistan’s democratic values and commitment to human rights. The interplay between the military’s influence, the strategies of political parties, and the public’s response will shape the country’s democratic trajectory in the years to come.

For Pakistan to become a robust democracy, it is crucial that the elections are conducted fairly, transparently, and credibly, without the shadow of military influence. The role of civil society, media, and international observers in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process cannot be underestimated. As Pakistan stands at this democratic crossroads, the choices made by political actors and the response of citizens will determine whether the country moves forward in democracy or regresses into controlled politics. The world watches, hoping for a Pakistan that upholds the principles of democracy and human rights, where the voice of the people is paramount.

Marvi Sirmed

The writer is a freelance journalist and human rights defender.

The post Do Pakistan’s Upcoming Elections Hold Any Credibility? appeared first on Dissent Today.