Who will blink first in Pakistan’s high-stakes political game?
https://arab.news/jh9da
An unprecedented open confrontation has erupted between Pakistan’s two power wielders – the representative political forces and the security establishment. This detente has always existed but has rarely been as bruising and ugly as it seems right now. Where will the chips fall for each claimant to the reins of the country? That depends on who will blink first in this high-stakes game.
An unusual unity among the ranks of the most formidable opposition in Pakistan’s history – both in terms of numbers in parliament where the pro-establishment government uncomfortably hangs by a thin majority in National Assembly while the opposition controls the influential Senate – has allowed confrontation with the security establishment to reach a breaking point where one adversary may pay a steep price soon.
At the heart of this confrontation is an unprecedented political crisis where the Pakistan Muslim League-N led from exile by three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif is on a war path naming and shaming certain generals for allegedly plotting his ouster and what is widely seen as a vindictive hounding of his family for alleged corruption.
His daughter Maryam Nawaz is matching his incendiary rhetoric soundbite by soundbite and in the process being a target of some astonishing personal attacks including a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction security establishment-led break in into her hotel room at 4am with her husband arrested from their bed.
While not matching the inflammatory soundbite of Nawaz and Maryam, fellow opposition leader Bilawal Bhutto of Pakistan People’s Party also seems to be in an unforgiving mood at his party’s government in Sindh being left embarrassed at the hotel room incident and the province’s top cop being kidnapped. He had to personally step in to reverse an unprecedented rebellion by the civilian security forces against the military establishment. The army chief had to, again unprecedentedly, demote his officers to help Bilawal stem the rebellion.
Other contributory factors to the creation of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the formidable alliance of opposition parties that has struck a chord-- is a public reeling under record inflation and taxes and ready to support a growing rebellion. The opposition has upped the ante riding on this angry public sentiment.
Adnan Rehmat
Several key factors have brought things to a pass where the opposition leaders – mercilessly hounded by the Imran Khan government-- have had enough being starved of normal political space. They seem left with little to lose except their fear of the worst after variably seeing their bank accounts frozen, their parents and senior party aides arrested or jailed and their social and political lives severely disrupted.
Other contributory factors to the creation of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the formidable alliance of opposition parties that has struck a chord-- is a public reeling under record inflation and taxes and ready to support a growing rebellion. The opposition has upped the ante riding on this angry public sentiment.
Optimists say this may be Pakistan’s best chance yet of negotiating a fundamental pact to rejuvenating the fortunes of a country that is unravelling at the seams. There are hints of a possible dialogue among principals on both sides and to negotiate for representative political forces to get back the reins of governance and policy. The PDM is already working on a new charter of democracy to set the agenda for possible talks and the very first hints of them offering a formal dialogue with the establishment have emerged.
The pessimists point out that this is easier said than done and that the country’s powerful military still has the wherewithal to stay in charge. But it seems a new generation of politicians to whom the mantle has been passed is in favor of fighting for their rights--- with time on their side.
Assuming that a national dialogue on rebooting the power structure materializes, it should be based on total compliance with constitutional guarantees and civilian supremacy based on a new charter of democracy that puts social development and political progress at the heart of the new pact.
Pakistan will not survive an outdated obsession with being a security state if economic and socio-political development are not put in the driving seat.
– Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
