Pakistan's Generals At Bay
Or: How to Lose Your Own Rigged Election
“What was called the Roman empire, in this [3rd] century, was a kind of irregular republic, much like the aristocracy of Algeria, where the army, which has sovereign power, makes and unmakes a magistrate called the dey. And perhaps it is a rather general rule that military government is, in certain respects, republican rather than monarchical…and what was the emperor except the minister of a violent government, elected for the special benefit of the soldiers?” - Montesquieu [Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, XVI]
Pakistan held Parliamentary elections on February 8th. Though the military has always had a lot of influence in the country, in this instance the manipulation was so egregious that it was billed “The General’s Election.” The country’s most popular political leader, the former Prime Minister Imran Khan, a retired cricket superstar, is in prison on a variety of charges. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf [PTI,] was barred from contesting the election, leading its members to run as independents. They were also banned from using the party’s cricket bat logo next to their names on the ballot, which is crucial for voters in this country which still has high rates of illiteracy. Despite severe efforts to tamp down on the party, and what appears to be clear electoral fraud, PTI-affiliated independent candidates still shocked the country and the world by taking the most seats with a healthy plurality. However, only registered parties are allowed to form a government, and further, PTI and the other parties have no intention of working with each other. The parties of the country’s two political dynasties, the Sharifs and the Bhuttos, have said they will come together and form a coalition government, leaving Khan imprisoned as the military-aligned “justice” system continues piling charges against him. Though it is no secret that the military is the real power center in the country- they have taken direct control of the country for 3 long periods- during times of civilian rule they historically give the elected government relatively broad sway over domestic non-security related affairs. However, this time the military interfered to an unprecedented degree and everyone noticed. This puts the Biden Administration in a tough position, as they claim democracy promotion is their top foreign policy goal while military-dominated Pakistan is a key US ally in South Asia.
Pakistan’s government is commonly called a “hybrid regime” by those who know little about political theory, as if it is some sort of novelty that conflict should exist between the democratic aspects of government and more permanent, less inclusive aspects of the state. In reality, governments of any type generally have one or more centers of power which exist outside of the normal political and judicial process. Montesquieu’s description of the late Roman Empire that I used as an epigraph is helpful, but perhaps Pakistan’s military is better compared to the priests in the Roman Republic, at the time when you could say it had reached maturity but was not yet in decay. Despite the widespread and fallacious notion that Rome “copied” their religion from the Greeks, in reality Rome had a unique state religion one hears little about. The highest priests, Augers, practiced reading the flight of birds [this aspect they are said to have got from the Etruscans.] This art was always secretive, and is thus mostly lost to history, but in short, an auger would set up in a roofless tent at a certain spot for a set amount of time and record how many birds of what type flew over in what direction and they took some kind of information from this. All government authority in Rome was said to be derived from these readings, known as “auspices.” The auspices were read either by priests from a self-selecting college or by magistrates selected through the political process. Commonly, this was a routine matter to approve the time to hold an election or assign a campaign to a general, but other times it would be determined that the auspices had been held incorrectly, and an election which had already taken place would be annulled, or a candidate for Tribune, the democratic representative, would be declared ineligible. This process was a mystery to the general public, and some of the priesthoods were the last positions to remain exclusive to Patricians, Rome’s hereditary upper class which lost power over time to men of ability, and later, of wealth. In short, it was a highest level of government and the public was not privy to the decision making process.
It’s easy to look at this practice cynically, as it is foreign to us and seems silly. However, Republican Rome was a deeply religious society, famed for how seriously they took oaths. It is inevitable that some of the time the process was corrupt, but we can assume that most augers and the general public took this in earnest and believed in the way their own government was ran. Similarly, many Americans believe that “the deep state” is a conspiracy theory when it relates to the United States, because they believe in our system, but they consider a deep state to obviously exist when it relates to a country like Turkiye or Pakistan. It is also generally the case that when a country grows up in fear of a larger neighbor, in this case India, that the military assumes a high degree of power within society. In general, militaries are highly trusted institutions. Throughout Pakistan’s history the military has constituted the sovereign force relating to national security, the top concern, but there has also often been democratic component of the government. We can assume that at least some significant amount of Pakistan’s public considers the military’s power to be necessary for security and stability, or else it wouldn’t have remained so resilient in this role. Machiavelli was of the belief that the inevitable conflict between the lower and upper orders is what allows a republic to grow strong, writing, “In every republic there are two different tendencies, that of the people and that of the upper class…all of the laws which are passed in favor of liberty are born from the rift between the two” [Discourses, I.4.] Up to now the system of military supremacy has worked at least well enough for Pakistan to survive, and survival is never a sure thing for a young state, or really a state of any age.
To a greater or lesser extent every country has this same “hybrid government” that is discussed regarding Pakistan, what varies is the balance and which influence is kept out of view. What has changed in Pakistan is that, like the US, the deep state had to show its hand much more than usual when faced with a celebrity populist leader who questioned their control, or at the very least behaved erratically enough that they found it concerning. This current sequence of events, at least for our purposes, began when long-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz [PMLN] was implicated in the Panama Papers scandal and removed from office by the courts. He later went into exile and faced several more charges. Sharif had always had a rocky relationship with the military establishment, and in the 2018 elections, they backed Imran Khan. Khan, considered one of the greatest cricket players of all time, had spent his retirement from sports building up a small political party, the PTI, which had continued to gain popularity. However, Khan charted an increasingly independent course, most of all not going along with the futile sanctions regime against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, and in doing so ran afoul Pakistan’s military establishment, and perhaps more importantly, the United States.
In the spring of 2022 Khan lost a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly [the lower house] and was thrown out of power. Khan claimed he was ousted by a US-led conspiracy out of anger at his lack of support for Ukraine, though he later walked back these claims. However, in August of 2023, The Intercept published a “cypher,” or diplomatic cable, covering one meeting where diplomatic pressure took place. It can’t be said to show a conspiracy, but Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US was directly told “all will be forgiven” if there was a no-confidence vote against Khan. The Ambassador should generally be considered the Prime Minister’s representative and such meetings are meant to be proxy communications with his office; it is, to say the least, unusual that such a meeting should encourage the removal of a head of government. Either way, Khan was accused of releasing the cable, something both him and The Intercept deny, and this was added to his charges while he was already in prison for corruption. Further, while that may not show a conspiracy, if that is what Joe Biden’s agent said to the Pakistani Ambassador to the United States- he is sure at the direction of the White House- we can only speculate on what American diplomats, intelligence agents, and swarms of “NGO” employees might have done in Pakistan. This is all the more true as this class is obsessed with Ukraine and surely there was a great deal of “organic” [not centrally directed] pressure about this as well. It should be assumed that there was an American conspiracy against Khan.
The history of Khan’s rise and fall is beyond the scope of what I am seeking to do here, but last year my friend Joe Shanley at the Open Book Report Substack published and excellent article on this topic for anyone who needs catching up on Pakistan and Khan:
In preparation for the February 8th election, Pakistan’s judiciary piled charges on the already imprisoned Khan. In the weeks leading up to election, Khan was sentenced to 7 years for illegally marrying, 10 years for leaking state secrets, and 14 years for selling state gifts. Khan’s wife, Bushra, who is known for her devotion to Sufi practices, was sentenced on the first and last cases, though she has so far been allowed to serve her sentence under house arrest at their mansion. I need to say a few words about this “illegally marrying” charge as it is entirely foreign to my primarily Western audience. Clearly, it is a sham charge- at least to sentence someone to 7 years in prison for it- but it works like this: Imran and Bushra were both remarrying, and the government claims that Bushra did not complete her “Iddat,” a mandatory waiting period, following her divorce, making their “Nikkah,” or marriage contract, invalid. Christian countries had rules like this when they were still governed by religious law, but it was never something which produced a long prison sentence. The PTI party said of the trials,
“After hours of rushed hearings at court, no cross examination of witnesses, and no due process - a mockery of the law…With the way these trials are being conducted, there will be a huge question mark on the February 8th elections. This is a test case for Pakistan's higher judiciary.
At the same time, Khan’s media advisor, Zulfi Bukhari, said “Can say I’m a witness in the Nikkah and it’s a categorically yet another fake case. From witnesses to the evidence to the procedure.” It is alleged that Bushra’s ex-husband is the one who brought forth the complaint, which sounds discrediting but that is clearly the point of the regulation, that the spurned party can file a grievance if he feels his spouse was stolen. However, no normal person is sentenced to 7 years in prison on this charge and it is the sort of thing where you would usually pay damages or face a short sentence.
According to Khan, he is facing at least 150 separate cases against him since he left office. Many of the charges allege various forms of financial corruption- note that Khan was already extremely wealthy, especially by Pakistani standards, when he took office. He has also been charged with violence and terrorism over riots that erupted following his arrest, which his supporters considered to be brought about by the machinations of the deep state. The riots caused many deaths and involved attacking army bases, so they were quite a bit different from some “insurrections” you hear about, and seemingly based on more legitimate grievances. It is impossible to not see the comparisons to Donald Trump, and there are a few things in that regard worth noting. The first of which is to simply imagine you have different views of either situation than you do. There are essentially four quadrants one could fall in about Trump and Khan, who are in fundamentally the same position: innocent/innocent, innocent/guilty, guilty/innocent, guilty/guilty. On top of this you need to add if a person is cynical or not cynical, which is to say, “this is the courts functioning properly” or “they’re using their power to subvert the will of the citizenry, and here’s why that’s a good thing.” The conclusion one would likely reach from the thought experiment of considering every position is that there should be a very high standard of transparent evidence when prosecuting popular political leaders or else it will destroy public confidence in the state.
The “mainstream” neoliberal globalist Western “think tank” view on the dual situations seems to be that this is an abuse by Pakistan’s institutions, if a necessary one, whereas perhaps not going harder against Trump demonstrates a failure of our own “democratic norms.” To Trump supporters it would seem obvious that it is a similar situation to Trump’s legal problems, though it seems by all accounts what is going on in Pakistan is quite a bit more centrally directed. I think Trump haters who see what is wrong with the situation in Pakistan have the most to learn here, about why the many disparate prosecutions in the United States look so bad to Trump supporters- it is something more than pliant sycophancy. That Khan is guilty and Trump is innocent is the hardest position to imagine, but could arise from believing Pakistan’s deep state is virtuous whereas the US ruling class is corrupt. That they are both guilty is a sign of a great deal of trust in the neutrality of judicial systems and a hatred for populism.
Though PTI’s victory, despite everything against them, shows Khan has wide support, clearly some of the population of Pakistan think he is an unprecedented crook, or at least that extraordinary measures are necessary to stop him from destroying the country, or else these charges wouldn’t have got as far as they did. I think what we can fairly take from this all is that though democratic power and permanent power are in conflict in both countries, the balance is quite a bit different as it has proven far harder for Trump’s enemies within the US government to imprison him and prevent him from seeking office than it was for Pakistan’s deep state to do the same to Khan. People claim the United States would be like a third world country if Trump “gets away with it” but in reality former political leaders go to prison in third world countries all the time, moreso than in developed countries with mature political systems. Though the United States seems to be failing in many ways, it has strong institutions and diverse competing power structures by global and historical standards, and our cycle of malicious political prosecutions is still in its infancy.
It was into this environment of prosecution and suppression that the imprisoned Khan tried to win an election, and by extension, his freedom. Four months before the election, Nawaz Sharif had returned to the country from exile and quickly had all of the charges against him dropped, a clear sign he had reconciled with the military and judicial establishment and was their preferred candidate. Meanwhile, Khan’s party was banned from standing for office, advertising on television, and using the cricket bat as a symbol in a country where literacy is only around 60% and thus many voters rely on symbols to fill out their ballots. Plenty of PTI’s leaders have been arrested or faced legal charges. Journalists reported that the military personally contacted them to demand they not cover PTI candidates. At various times all of PTI’s websites were blocked. Khan managed to communicate with the public through AI renditions of messages he gave his lawyers, a good use of a technology we more commonly fear as a source of disinformation [the videos made it clear that they were AI generated.] On top of all of this, the internet and mobile service were blocked entirely across the country on election day, using some terrorist attacks as a pretext. There were widespread accusations of outright fraud, including votes being drastically changed overnight [including votes being lowered, not just sudden increases like America saw in 2020.]
For all of this, the PTI-affiliated candidates won a shock victory, leaving Nawaz Sharif, who already had a scheduled victory speech just hours after the polls closed, perhaps the saddest loser in politics since Hillary Clinton rented out a victory room with New York City’s highest glass ceiling in 2016. Of the 266 contested seats, independents won 100, 93 of those associated with PTI. Meanwhile, Sharif’s PMLN won 73 seats, while the Pakistan People’s Party of the Bhutto family, the country’s other main political dynasty, won 54 seats, [another 60 seats are reserved for woman, and 10 are reserved for non-Muslims, but these are decided proportionally.] The PTI claims it would have won about 80 more seats in a fair election. It’s not clear how they would have came to this specific number, but it’s obvious that given the totality of the ways their party was suppressed that the public wanted to give them more than 93 seats. Seeing their power, Khan’s supports reacted quickly, protesting across the country. As protesters generally do, they blocked roads and got into clashes with police trying to disperse the crowds. The protests have continued with the support of PTI’s leaders, and for now, they have no end in sight.
The Financial Times described Pakistan’s immediate post-election landscape as a “power vacuum,” given the PTI’s incredible success but no clear majority party among the posted results, writing:
“Observers said the PTI’s emergence as the largest party on Thursday represented a rare repudiation of the powerful army’s long-running manipulation of elections in Pakistan, with voters recoiling at the increasingly overt attempts to crush Khan’s party and prevent him from returning to office.”
The historic rivals PMLN and PPP, recognizing the reality of their position, decided to form a coalition government, naturally ignoring Khan’s warning that it would be a “misadventure” to do so with a stolen mandate. However, Nawaz Sharif will not be leading the PMLN government, having stepped aside in favor of his younger brother Shenbez, himself 72. According to Nawaz’s daughter Maryam, he did not want to manage a minority coalition government having had a clear majority his last 3 terms. Shenbez was previously the Prime Minister after Nawaz was thrown out of office, and is seen as being more compliant towards the Generals, compared to Nawaz who always had a difficult relationship with them. This is perhaps the best way to go given that this new government truly has no other source of authority, least of all the will of the voters. They can only rule by brute force.
On February 5th, 3 days before the election, Time Magazine, among the most “mainstream” publications of American media, ran an article titled, “Pakistan’s Elections Are Being Brazenly Rigged. Why Doesn’t the U.S. Seem to Care?” It’s one thing to win a rigged election, which is easy enough to ignore, but it’s another thing entirely to lose one. This is especially true because when you successfully rig an election you then have solid control of the government to cover up your crime. Some elections are unfair because the power of the state is used to suppress the opposition or promote the incumbent in various ways, some elections are unfair because the vote counting is dishonest, but most rigged elections are both. This election was both, and the military and judicial establishment’s efforts were a drastic failure. They didn’t control the process enough to cover the size of their real loss, and thus the country was flooded with screenshots and other images showing the clear PTI victory. It’s pretty easy to fudge an election by a point or two, it’s much harder to have fraud go unnoticed on a large scale; this was one of the more accurate things about the old computer game Tropico, where you rule a banana republic. Pakistan’s generals simply weren’t prepared for a PTI tidal wave. Further, fraudulent elections either rely on genuinely fooling a good part of the people, or intentionally insulting and demoralizing them with a 95+ percent victory, and no one was fooled or demoralized.
The clarity of what had happened forced the United States to care, or at least create the appearance of caring. The Biden Administration went farther than its usual vague statements about fairness and transparency when an ally is in this situation, with a US State Department press release from February 9th reading,
“We join credible international and local election observers in their assessment that these elections included undue restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly. We condemn electoral violence, restrictions on the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including attacks on media workers, and restrictions on access to the Internet and telecommunication services, and are concerned about allegations of interference in the electoral process. Claims of interference or fraud should be fully investigated.
The United States is prepared to work with the next Pakistani government, regardless of political party, to advance our shared interests.”
They were not in a position to say if there was “interference in the electoral process” but note the “join” and “condemn,” both of which take a stance that the election was unfair, not that it could have been unfair or that they should improve next time. The last line is also notable, as they previously seemed to have found it impossible to work with Khan towards “shared interests.” The UK and EU joined the US in calling for a probe of the elections. On Saturday, the 17th, a commissioner in the city of Rawalpindi, the country’s army headquarters, publicly announced he had helped rig the election. The New Arab reports that Liaqat Ali Chattha made the following statement, “We converted the losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes in 13 national assembly seats. For committing such a heinous crime, I will hand myself over to the police.” He further implicated the electoral commission and the country’s top judge. However, the election commission “rejected” his claims, while saying they would “Hold an enquiry.” It’s a bit curious why he would do it in the first place and then confess, but I imagine he didn’t think PTI would perform well enough for the rigging to matter and then felt bad about overriding the will of the people.
It is about as obvious as it could be that this election was a sham. The new coalition has not yet even tried to govern but it will be impossible for them to get public buy-in to any policy they should try to implement. The protests will certainly continue, here is just one video from the weekend I happened to find on Twitter:
The Biden Administration will have to make a decision between continuing to align itself with generals whose power seems to be fading, supporting the will of the Pakistani people, or more likely charting a faltering middle course that causes them to lose influence entirely. It seems the “hybrid regime” they speak of is on the outs, and either civilians will gain supremacy or the facade will end and military rule will be back in the open. I think that either way Pakistan itself will endure. Anglos and others from Western Europe really bought an “end of history” idea well before Fukuyama described it, that some sort of liberal democracy is the natural destination of human affairs, and that government should be calm and respectful with reliable “norms.” That was always a ridiculous idea, especially given that major European countries such as Greece and Spain were under military rule well within living memory and the modern era of a stable Western Europe is a tiny blip in the history books. The reality is that government is always in motion, and there is always conflict between different currents within a state. Pakistan is at a key point in its history, but the only thing unusual in this conflict is how bad the military failed at election rigging. We will see what comes of it. I have no reason to be a partisan in Pakistan’s elections and don’t support any of these politicians, but it’s obvious that the Pakistani public had a clear preference. The military will ignore the people at their peril, because the common man demanding liberty, or at least representation, is a much larger class than the nobility which seeks to oppress him. We can only hope that these groups can reach an agreement which makes Pakistan better, instead of letting this conflict reach an intensity which destroys Pakistan and themselves.
Thank you for reading! The Wayward Rabbler is written by Brad Pearce. If you enjoyed this content please subscribe and share. My main articles will always be free but paid subscriptions help me a huge amount. I have a tip jar at Ko-Fi where generous patrons can donate in $5 increments. I am now writing regularly for The Libertarian Institute. Join my Telegram channel The Wayward Rabbler. My Facebook page is The Wayward Rabbler. You can see my shitposting and serious commentary on Twitter @WaywardRabbler.
Thanks for an excellent read, though I have almost no prior knowledge of Pakistani politics. I think that you're so able to point out the comparability between Pakistan and the US helps capture the depths that we're reaching under the current regime.
I fail to understand why we seem to support people who lack any legitimacy. In the long run this is a loosing strategy, because the more we support governments in other countries that are not supported by the people, the more bad "karma" we will have in the future.