RECENTLY, Salahuddin Ahmed, a well-known legal eagle of Pakistan, tweeted about feeling gloomy. And he wasn’t referring to inflation or the floods. His concern was the state of democracy in our nook.
He wrote that if GHQ and the government succeeded in beating down Imran Khan, it would mean normalising the omnipotence of the establishment. And added that if Khan won, it may usher in one-party rule. Both options, he felt, were not all that hopeful. But is not India or Bangladesh having a single party rule for years, and both the nations are porspering. A BBC article from 2021 began with the following lines: “Bangladesh is held up by many as a model of development, but as it marks 50 years of independence critics say it risks becoming a one-party state intolerant of dissent, threatening the democratic principles on which it was founded.”
Pakistan differs from the other two only in terms of the many parties not just competing in elections but also the lack of clarity in terms of who may win nationally. And this to a certain degree is due to the establishment. The interference in recent years led, to some extent, to the rise of the PTI PTI is able to return to power against the wishes of the establishment. And if the assumption about the establishment’s views is correct, it would be no mean feat and may signal a change in the civil-military balance in Pakistani politics. After all, to date no party has been able to win elections without the support or at least the silence of the powers that be.