Pakistan: A Fourth Coup?

[moderatevoter]

Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, is no stranger to long marches or military coups. Twice in the 1990s, he helped take down Benazir Bhutto's government with military support. In 1999, his own government was overthrown in a military coup, and Nawaz Sharif was exiled to Saudi Arabia.

This year, Nawaz Sharif faces a tough challenge as two rival politicians are calling for his head. They both are leading a march on Islamabad, coinciding with Pakistan's Independence Day.

The first one is Imran Khan, leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI - Translated as "Pakistan Movement for Justice") and a former Pakistani cricket captain. Basically, Imran Khan remains bitter about his performance in last year's elections. Despite his promises of a political tsunami, the PTI only took control of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. He's insisted that the 2013 elections were rigged in all four provinces. He's calling for Nawaz Sharif to step down and for new elections.

The second politician who aims to march on the capital on Independence Day is Tahirul Qadri, the leader of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek and a cleric who runs an Islamic charity from Canada. His party did not contest last year's elections. His grievances aren't really clear, but he's calling for a revolution.

Since Nawaz Sharif's PML-N has strong numbers in the Parliament, I'm not concerned about either of these two toppling the government on their own. The concern is, many believe that the military is encouraging both of them Khan and Qadri. Last year, the military made it perfectly clear that they preferred a PTI victory, or would even settle for another PPP victory rather than deal with Nawaz Sharif and PML-N. Sharif is known for his poor relations with the army, which is currently irritated by Sharif's fixation on trying Musharraf.

I'm certainly anxious to see how this plays out.

[moderatevoter]

PTIs performance was actually pretty impressive. Khan's expectations of forming a government were just totally delusional. Before the last election, PTI was considered to have more supporters outside Pakistan than inside.

Agreed.

Are they only protesting because they are not in power or do they have real grievances?

I certainly think that's what Imran Khan's main motivation is. He doesn't want to wait until the next elections in 2018.

As for Qadri, I'm not really sure what his primary motives are, since I doubt he has as much to gain as Khan. But this isn't the first time he's pulled a stunt like this. He did something similar in 2013, near the end of the PPP's term, arguing that the government had lost its "moral authority" to govern due to corruption related issues.

But there are a few differences between the stunt Qadri pulled in 2013 and now. Firstly, it was near the end of the PPP's term. Even if Qadri had succeeded in dislodging the PPP government, a caretaker government would have taken over -- just a little earlier than scheduled. So the stakes weren't as high. We're still in the first year of PML-N's term, and Nawaz Sharif is desperate to survive for a full term. Coming off a fairly impressive (if we're looking at this realistically -- as Famous Mortimer said) showing in the elections, PTI is certainly more legitimate and formidable than they were before. I also think it's important to consider the geographic vote bases for each of these parties. PPP's main vote base is Sindh, whereas PML-N's primary vote base is Punjab. PTI and PAT are also trying to compete for strength in Punjab, whereas none of the other three parties are really a threat to the PPP in Sindh. PML-N has a weaker hand in negotiations than the PPP did in 2013, and there is more at stake.

A problem with Nawaz Sharif (which is nothing new, really) is his tendency to panic, overreact, and mismanage situations. I think he did a poor job of responding to Khan's allegations of rigged elections, and then he panicked when Khan announced this march; he initially tried to curtail the demonstrations and asked the military to increase their numbers in Islamabad. The government was also using shipping containers to seal off roads in Lahore and Islamabad. Then he seemingly changed his mind, announcing he'd allow the protestors to travel to Islamabad.

There's widespread frustration in Pakistan over the struggling economy, violence, and lack of basic supplies (like electricity - which Nawaz Sharif emphasized in his 2013 campaign). While these concerns don't seem like primary motivations for either Imran Khan or Qadri, they're nevertheless using them to mobilize their supporters.

[moderatevoter]

Pakistan is one of the two successor states to British India - India being the other one. India, by the standards of developing Asian countries, is a success story as far as functional democratic institutions and political stability. It's by and large a more ethically-challenged version of Westminster. Pakistan, by comparison, has been run more like a Central American banana republic or a post-monarchical Middle Eastern state. It's had a revolving door of reactionary military strongmen, occasionally punctuated by a populist civilian leader like one of the Bhuttos or their allies.

Both countries became independent with the same democratic and civil institutions - structures that had been put in place during British rule. So why did India end up being so much higher functioning than Pakistan? How did Pakistan end up having more in common with its neighbor to the west than with its neighbor to the east?

I don't like the direction Nehru took India on the economic front (which India is paying for till the present day) but I must give him credit where credit is due. He laid the foundation for a stable democracy and thankfully that has continued to this day. Why Jinnah failed at doing that is a very good question and I don't have a good answer to that. It should also be noted that after independence from Pakistan, Bangladesh has also been a fairly stable country despite facing much greater challenges than Pakistan.

It should be noted that Nehru was alive and ruled India well into the 1960s, whereas Jinnah was dead in 1948. This left a leadership vacuum. That's one of many reasons for the divergent trajectories.

[moderatevoter]

Pakistan is one of the two successor states to British India - India being the other one. India, by the standards of developing Asian countries, is a success story as far as functional democratic institutions and political stability. It's by and large a more ethically-challenged version of Westminster. Pakistan, by comparison, has been run more like a Central American banana republic or a post-monarchical Middle Eastern state. It's had a revolving door of reactionary military strongmen, occasionally punctuated by a populist civilian leader like one of the Bhuttos or their allies.

Both countries became independent with the same democratic and civil institutions - structures that had been put in place during British rule. So why did India end up being so much higher functioning than Pakistan? How did Pakistan end up having more in common with its neighbor to the west than with its neighbor to the east?

Well for one thing, India had something like 90% of the subcontinent's industry before the partition, and much of the financial reserves from the colonial government. Not to mention the fact that there were already several thriving major cities in India...

Also keep in mind all of the refugees who were resettled n Pakistan in the years after the partition. There was a lot of violence and chaos in that process.

An unfair comparison, really.

That's not true. Pakistan had Karachi and Lahore, which were major cities before partition. And don't forget that refugees went both ways. There were plenty of refugees who flooded into India from Pakistan and what would later become Bangladesh. Delhi, for example, grew at an extraordinary rate during the time of partition as Sikh and Hindu refugees from Pakistani Punjab flooded in. In the east, the state of Assam has a massive Bengali population, many of whom moved from Bangladesh. The movement occurred slower on that front though, as the level of violence was also lower.

It should be noted that pre-partition, the business industries and professional spheres were largely dominated by Hindus, particularly in Karachi and Sindh as a whole. When many of these Hindus left for India, this was essentially an exodus of the middle class, which has crippled Sindh's economy.

[moderatevoter]

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Right, I knew what you meant. Generally, whenever the army stages a coup, its able to do so by presenting itself as a competent alternative to the democratically-elected government for dealing with whatever national crisis. With the bin Laden raid, the army was utterly embarrassed and looked ridiculous. The fact bin Laden had (seemingly) lived undetected for years right across from Pakistan's equivalent West Point was embarrassing, and so was the idea that American troops had entered Pakistani airspace undetected. So the army couldn't really present itself as a competent alternative, and so there wasn't really popular support for a coup (like there have been in previous cases).

[moderatevoter]

Imran Khan's PTI 'to resign all Pakistan parliamentary seats.'

Ugh.