The Hindu: The Pakistani military does not realise that its meddling makes Pakistan more unstable, not less, as does its insistence on a narrow definition of the national interest, which civilians are not allowed to alter
Pakistan’s current political turmoil should be seen as the symptom of a deeper malaise. Although most political parties represented in Parliament have rallied to the side of preserving the country’s fragile democratic system, there are still powerful forces that oppose democracy. And the unwillingness of Pakistan’s powerful military to disengage from politics even when it is not ready to assume power in a coup will continue to be a disruptive factor for some time to come.
In any other democracy, protests against the alleged rigging of polls 15 months after the counting of votes would have been pooh-poohed. But Imran Khan was still able to turn his star power into a crowd of a few thousand protesters, arguing that the Parliament to which he was elected did not have an honest mandate. TheCanada-based cleric, Tahir-ul-Qadri was also able to return from his exile for a second time in two years to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif along with a call for a people’s revolution.
Elsewhere, protesters would make their point and go home while their leaders built up support to challenge the government at the next election. But here they camped outside Parliament for several days while the leaders garnered live television coverage from air-conditioned shipping containers. When the leaders incited violence, the Army offered to protect state buildings but neither soldiers nor the police were willing to forcibly end the sit-in.
The Punjab police, which takes orders from Mr. Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz, who is Chief Minister of the province, had botched an earlier attempt to deal with Qadri’s cult-like followers in Lahore; 19 people were killed in that incident. This time, the government wanted to keep the body count down.
A few dozen deaths during anti-election rigging protests in 1977 had been used by General Zia-ul-Haq as justification for the imposition of martial law. Gen. Zia had subsequently executed the Prime Minister he deposed and went on to rule for 11 years. Mr. Sharif clearly wanted to avoid that fate by allowing Mr. Khan and Qadri to paralyse life in Islamabad without using force and creating martyrs. Mr. Khan and Qadri are hoping to bypass the waiting time until the next elections even as they tap into disenchantment in Punjab’s urban middle class. In doing so, they are emulating Nawaz Sharif himself, who became Prime Minister by not allowing Benazir Bhutto to complete her first term after the 1988 elections. Then, the Pakistani constitution — as amended by Gen. Zia — allowed the President to dissolve Parliament and dismiss the Prime Minister on grounds of corruption or incompetence. Now, the Constitution has been restored to its original form and has no such provision.
While all this turmoil was going on in Pakistan, India’s ruling party BJP demolished a Mosque in Ahmadabad Gujrat, as they did to the Babri Mosque. This time they did it on the quiet, hence no Media reporting. I have photos of before and after of the Mosque.