CURRENT HISTORY
April 2018
“While Sharif’s disqualification was certainly not as egregious as an outright coup or any other extraconstitutional
intervention, the nature and process of his removal amounts to another setback for democracy in Pakistan.”
The Struggle for Control of
Pakistan’s Fragile Democracy
UMAIR JAVED
O
n July 28, 2017, a Supreme Court verdict
put Nawaz Sharif’s name on the long list
of deposed Pakistani prime ministers for
a third time. Having returned to power after his
party, the eponymously named Pakistan Muslim
League–Nawaz (PML-N), swept to victory in the
2013 general elections, Sharif fell 10 months short
of becoming only the second prime minister in
the country’s history to see through a full five-year
term in office. Thwarted twice before by untimely
dismissals of his governments in 1993 and 1999,
it is now almost impossible that he will be allowed
a fourth attempt.
The technical hinge of the unanimous and ver-
bosely moralizing judgment was that Sharif had
deliberately failed to disclose a sum of 10,000
dirhams ($2,700) on his election nomination
form. He had been paid the money as chairman
of his son’s business venture in Dubai, a position
he had held during his first year in office. In the
eyes of the five Supreme Court justices who ruled
on the case, Sharif no longer met the Islamic mo-
rality standards for an elected member of Parlia-
ment, as enshrined in Article 62 (1-f) of the Con-
stitution. Thus he was immediately disqualified
from Parliament and from his position as prime
minister.
Following this verdict, in late February 2018
the Supreme Court delivered another blow to
Sharif’s political fortunes by ruling that a person
who failed to meet the standards for holding elect-
ed office was also unfit to lead a political party.
In the space of eight turbulent months, Sharif lost
UMAIR JAVED is a columnist for Dawn, Pakistan’s leading
English-language newspaper.
123
both the premiership of the country and the presi-
dency of the PML-N.
Since his removal from office, Sharif and his
daughter (and anointed political heir) Maryam
have embarked on a populist campaign under the
slogan “mujhe kyun nikala?” (“Why was I oust-
ed?”). Their answer is one familiar to anyone with
even a cursory understanding of Pakistan’s politi-
cal history: his removal was the result of yet an-
other conspiracy against elected civilian suprema-
cy by the country’s “establishment”—the moniker
long used to describe the powerful military high
command. In speeches to large crowds across the
country, Sharif’s lament boils down to the asser-
tion that the generals and their pliant partners in
the judiciary cannot tolerate democracy and fear a
popular elected leader. Given that the PML-N had
looked set for another strong showing in the next
general election, Sharif has argued that disqualify-
ing him on a minor technicality was the only way
to cut the ruling party, and thus democracy, down
to size.
This sloganeering is designed to evoke sympa-
thy and solidarity among the 14 million or so vot-
ers who brought the party to power in 2013. It is
also intended to cultivate a sense of indignation
at the way Sharif has been sidelined by unelected
judges and generals. Like all campaign messages
it is a simplistic one, but it does touch on several
core truths about this latest period of tumult.
A more dispassionate reading of events over the
past eight months would suggest greater complex-
ity, much of which emanates from changes that
have unfolded over a longer period of time. But
subversive machinations by the army are certainly
one ingredient. As seen repeatedly over the past
124 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2018
decade, praetorian tendencies continue to limit the
extent to which two successive popularly elected
governments, and a peaceful transfer of power be-
tween them in 2013, have been able to consolidate
civilian democratic rule. Thanks to backdoor pres-
sure and overt political manipulation, the military
has been able to expand its decision-making mo-
nopoly over a number of policy domains, even
while the political system retains a civilian face.
However, the linear narrative of khaki-uniformed
dictation and black-robed acquiescence, taken up
by Sharif to explain his ouster and by a number of
commentators to explain the country’s perpetual
democratic fragility, is incomplete.
Democracy returned to Pakistan on the shoul-
ders of a rule-of-law movement against the mili-
tary dictator, President Pervez Musharraf, in late
2007. It was inspired by judges who refused to
accept Musharraf’s legal manipulations, and its
backbone consisted of leading lawyers and bar
associations. In the decade since, the moral au-
thority and institutional self-awareness accumu-
lated through the anti-Musharraf movement have
given birth to a strong streak of judicial activ-
ism—and, in the process, created another bastion
of political authority. The autonomous agency of
judges championing their own agenda, and of the
higher judiciary as a crusading institution with
its own vision of moral authority, is more salient
in the current phase of democratization than at
any point in the country’s past.
Thus the story of Sharif’s downfall, and the
broader trajectory of Pakistan’s democratic back-
sliding, include elements of two concurrent ten-
dencies: praetorian pressures and an institutional
recalibration of state power toward the judiciary.
PAPER TRAIL
Sharif’s ouster was the culmination of a long
and controversial judicial investigation into his
family’s financial affairs. It was triggered more
than a year earlier: on April 3, 2016, the leak of
the Panama Papers (millions of documents from a
Panamanian law firm that showed how it had set
up offshore tax shelters for wealthy clients around
the world, including a number of prominent polit-
ical figures) revealed that Sharif’s two sons, Hassan
and Hussain, and his daughter, Maryam, were ben-
eficiaries and shareholders of two offshore com-
panies. These companies in turn controlled four
apartments in London’s Avenfield House, located
in the high-end Mayfair district. The apartments
had been acquired at least a decade earlier, and
subsequently were used as collateral to raise over
$12 million in business loans.
The leak proved to be a godsend for Sharif’s op-
ponents, most notably the cricket star turned an-
ticorruption crusader Imran Khan and his party,
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Having been swept
aside by the PML-N’s commanding victory in the
2013 elections, and then by the ruling of a spe-
cially appointed commission that rejected allega-
tions of vote-rigging, the PTI seized on the Panama
Papers revelations as an opportunity for clawing
back some ground.
In the months following the leak a political
crisis steadily escalated, as an intransigent and
at times brazen prime minister faced off with a
stubborn opposition. Between April and Decem-
ber 2016, the country witnessed bitter exchanges
in Parliament and on television news shows, ex-
tensive public protests, and finally an attempt by
the PTI to “lock down” the capital city, Islamabad.
The party’s core demand was for Sharif to furnish
a paper trail for the foreign properties and subject
himself to public accountability. With rising tem-
peratures all around, and familiar chatter about an
imminent military takeover resurfacing periodi-
cally, the Supreme Court of Pakistan intervened
under expansive powers granted to it by the Con-
stitution and took up the opposition’s request to
investigate the affair.
The court asked Sharif and his family to pro-
vide documentation for the purchase of the flats
in London. In response, Sharif’s submissions in-
cluded a variety of oral accounts about the histori-
cal origins of his family’s wealth, a few documents
from Persian Gulf–based business concerns set up
by members of the family over the years, and a let-
ter from Qatar’s former prime minister, Hamad bin
Jassam bin Jaber Al Thani, stating that his father
had engaged in business relations with Sharif’s fa-
ther and that the apartments were transferred to
the Sharifs to settle past financial dealings.
On April 20, 2017, the court ruled that Sharif
and his family members had failed to provide a sat-
isfactory explanation for their wealth. Two justices
on the five-member bench opined that the prime
minister should be disqualified immediately for
being untruthful and likely corrupt. But the other
three overruled their colleagues (for the time be-
ing) and said that further probing by a Joint Inves-
tigation Team (JIT) was required to ascertain the
source of the family’s wealth. Pointedly suggesting
that civilian investigatory and accountability insti-
tutions would lack autonomy in a case concerning

the prime minister, the court ordered that the JIT
include “impartial” representatives from the mili-
tary’s two intelligence agencies.
The military’s formal entry into the JIT served
as the first indication of something bigger at play.
Concerns about bias and conspiracies gained trac-
tion when the team released its findings three
months later in a report replete with accusatory
language. Its coverage of the prime minister’s fi-
nancial history was suspiciously detailed, and it
drew extensively on evidence and testimony ac-
cumulated in previous cases filed against Sharif by
Musharraf’s military regime through its anti-graft
agency, the National Accountability Bureau.
But for those on the lookout for an establish-
ment conspiracy in all this, the Supreme Court
ruling emerged as the smoking gun. Despite all the
report’s depth and detail, the court cited a minus-
cule infraction for its decision to disqualify Sharif.
It was the omission of a small amount of money
on the election nomination form that formed the
core of a judgment invoking
deceitfulness and moral failure
as its rationale. To Sharif, his The military and the
supporters, and many observ- judiciary are strongly
ers, this was a strong indica-
tion that all the scrutiny of the positioned to influence
past months had been devoted future political outcomes.
to a hunt for something—any-
thing—to justify a pre-planned
end.
A STATE WITHIN
The notion that the military plays a shadowy
part in almost everything that happens in Paki-
stan’s political sphere stands up to empirical scru-
tiny. There is sufficient reason to think that this
adage holds for these recent events as well. To un-
derstand how the military’s actions shaped Sharif’s
dismissal, one has to take stock of the changing
nature of military dominance in Pakistan during
the past decade of democracy.
The current period is qualitatively different
from earlier phases of civilian rule, most notably
1988–99, due to its foundation in a consensus
among a set of civilian political elites. The Paki-
stan Peoples Party (PPP), which governed from
2008 to 2013, and the current ruling party, the
PML-N, have a long history of bitter competition
that destabilized the political system. Throughout
the ’90s, the military took advantage of the fac-
tional strife to exercise influence on key areas of
policy-making, most notably foreign relations and
Pakistan’s Fragile Democracy • 125
national security. In instances where its interests
were threatened by civilian ambition or growing
instability, it intervened by ousting the govern-
ment. This was done three times through a proxy
in the presidency, and once by a direct coup.
During this period the rival parties lost two gov-
ernments each, which eventually compelled Sharif
and his PPP counterpart, Benazir Bhutto, to agree
on the basic idea of limiting the army’s political
role. That required amending the constitution,
which had been mangled under previous dictator-
ships, to bring back its original democratic shape.
This became a reality in 2010, when a unani-
mously passed constitutional amendment helped
restore the primacy of Parliament, took away the
president’s power to dissolve a government, and
resolved historical imbalances between a strong
central government and weak provinces by de-
volving key legislative and fiscal authority.
Faced with a more unified civilian front, a fire-
walled constitution, and new arenas of civilian fis-
cal and administrative power
in the provinces, the military
has turned to a variety of other
tactics—short of a direct take-
over—to bolster its authority.
These include manipulating and
periodically coercing democrat-
ic voices through its extensive
intelligence apparatus: bribing
and strong-arming the country’s ostensibly inde-
pendent private media, using proxy politicians in
other parties (such as the PTI), and occasionally en-
gaging in the strategic deployment of mass protest
through its clients, such the cleric-politician Mu-
hammad Tahir-ul-Qadri and the Difa-e-Pakistan
Council, an Islamist far-right coalition. In pivotal
moments since 2008, the military has been able to
use these strategies to wrest power from civilian
politicians, and to retain its financial privileges as
well as its decision-making autonomy with regard
to national security and foreign policy.
The most recent civil-military impasse began
with Sharif’s sweeping electoral victory in 2013,
which left the military face to face once again with
a leader it had long mistrusted. Sharif got his start
in politics in the 1980s thanks to the patronage of
a military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, but his ca-
reer subsequently had put him in direct confronta-
tion with the high command on several occasions.
In 1999, Sharif’s government was overthrown in a
military coup led by Musharraf, and Sharif himself
was sent into exile for seven years.
126 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2018
After returning to power five years ago, Sharif
attempted to chart an independent course of ac-
tion in areas historically outside of civilian con-
trol. This most notably included making peace
overtures to the Afghan government, as well as ini-
tiating plans to normalize relations with India and
improve prospects for cross-border trade. Both of
these intiatives, along with an attempt to charge
Musharraf with treason, placed him on a collision
course with the military.
Beyond a turf war over particular policy do-
mains, the military also has an institutional mis-
trust of Sharif given the political threat that he
represents to its interests. The military’s historical
dominance is rooted in its relationship with the
country’s largest province, Punjab. The bulk of the
officer corps and the fighting ranks is drawn from
Punjab. The military enjoys extensive control over
agricultural land, urban real estate, and other key
commercial ventures in the province. It is Punjab’s
middle class and landed elite that have traditional-
ly supported the military in its quest to centralize
power and rejected demands
from the smaller provinces for
equitable treatment. The anti-Musharraf movement
Sharif posed a structural
complication because he is a
has given birth to a strong
Punjabi leader who is popular streak of judicial activism.
with large sections of the Pun-
jabi population due to his and
his party’s perceived competence in governance.
Most of all, his political stature and popularity
stand apart in a province that has historically sided
only with those thought to be in the military’s good
books. In the military’s calculus, losing Punjab to a
powerful civilian leader would be the surest way of
losing power in the country at large.
THE UPPER HAND
During much of the latest Sharif government’s
tenure, the military insured itself against such an
outcome by using its destabilizing tactics to retain
the upper hand in the political sphere. In 2014,
the PTI’s mass protests over alleged rigging of the
2013 elections allowed the army chief at the time,
General Raheel Sharif (no relation to Nawaz), to
intervene and play the role of mediator. There
were numerous indications that the mobilization
was being encouraged (if not outright facilitated)
by the military’s intelligence agencies, precisely to
weaken Sharif’s newly elected government. Sus-
picions along these lines gained further credence
given the involvement of the military-backed cler-
ic Tahir-ul-Qadri and several thousand of his spiri-
tual followers in the protest.
After this initial weakening of Sharif, the mili-
tary shored up its dominant position with care-
fully constructed social and news media cam-
paigns designed to boost its popularity with the
public. Through its Inter-Services Public Relations
wing, it funds music videos, television programs,
and movies, along with a great deal of content for
online news sources. This expansive use of new
media promotes a self-serving narrative wherein
Pakistan’s future prospects are tied to a strong
military capable of fighting internal and external
threats. Segments of the civilian political elite are
portrayed as venal and self-serving—and in some
cases, as outright security threats. Sharif’s attempts
to normalize relations with India have been fodder
for such a portrayal.
Given the animosity between the military
and Sharif, it is no surprise that the Panama Pa-
pers leak was used to narrow the space for civil-
ian political authority even further. The strategic
placement of military officials
on the team investigating the
prime minister signaled a clear
intent to use official account-
ability mechanisms as a stick to
tame the government. During
the course of the inquiry, sev-
eral media reports asserted that
military intelligence agencies were assisting with
the preparation of witnesses’ testimony and pass-
ing instructions to investigators.
While the court’s ruling came as a major blow to
the PML-N, the prospect of a deposed Sharif retain-
ing popularity with voters and exercising influence
through his handpicked successor as prime minis-
ter, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, is a continuing source
of concern for the military. Sharif’s disqualification
did not result in an immediate implosion within
the ruling party. Nor did it lead to any substantive
change in the leadership of the party.
To tighten the noose further, the military has
since relied on a number of Islamist actors to cre-
ate public pressure. In October and November
2017, an extremist cleric, Khadim Hussain Rizvi,
led protest marches in the capital and other major
cities, threatening to overthrow the government in
response to alleged blasphemy committed by the
federal law minister. The protesters blocked one
of the main junctions for vehicles entering Islam-
abad, creating another highly volatile situation
that lasted for over two weeks, and ended only

when the government capitulated and dismissed
the law minister.
The biggest indication of the military’s covert
support for these destabilizing elements (or at the
very least, its tacit acceptance of them) came when
the government asked for its assistance in clear-
ing out the protesters. The military responded
with a flat-out refusal, which was duly publicized
through sympathetic proxies in the news media,
evidently to cause further embarrassment to the
government.
This episode also raises familiar concerns about
the military’s use of Islamists for political and stra-
tegic gain. As seen over the past two decades, the
military’s cultivation of jihadist proxies to fight
in Kashmir and Afghanistan ultimately led to a
bloody domestic insurgency, which cost Pakistan
50,000 lives. While the latest coterie of Islamist
activists has proved to be useful for cornering a
civilian government, emboldening them may well
pose a renewed risk to domestic peace in the years
ahead.
AN ASSERTIVE BENCH
Despite the benefits that the military reaped
from Sharif’s dismissal, to see the episode solely
as a matter of praetorian generals pulling the Su-
preme Court’s strings would be an oversimplifi-
cation. There is little doubt that the military has
opportunistically used a corruption scandal to ex-
pand its influence and played a part in removing
yet another civilian politician it dislikes. However,
the path that led to Sharif’s ouster provides an in-
dication of other institutional recalibrations. To
put it very briefly, were the Supreme Court not as
cognizant of its own reputation and its place in
Pakistani public opinion, a decision of this nature
would have been unlikely.
To understand the court’s contemporary dynam-
ics, one has to go back to the rule-of-law move-
ment of 2007–9 and the judicial politics pioneered
under then–Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry’s leadership. At the helm of the court
for nearly six years over two terms, Chaudhry es-
tablished the institution as a political player by us-
ing suo motu powers to take up issues of public im-
portance without any external request. He found
considerable support among other judges on the
High and Supreme courts who shared a similar ac-
tivist vision and sought to intervene in arenas that
the court had traditionally avoided.
At the height of this interventionist period, the
Supreme Court was independently taking up cases
Pakistan’s Fragile Democracy • 127
ranging from national security (most notably the
Memogate scandal involving former Ambassador
to the United States Husain Haqqani, who alleged-
ly made a secret plea to the Obama administration
to prevent a military takeover in Pakistan), to cor-
ruption and the privatization of public-sector en-
terprises. The justices even deliberated on whether
the government had the authority to set the price
of street food—ultimately ruling that it did, but
only for specific types of food.
Over that fateful period, the court moved from
its traditional role as an oft-ignored and pliant in-
stitution to one that is autonomous and invites a
great deal of public attention. And its new role has
been fairly well received: since 2008, the higher
judiciary has retained high public approval rat-
ings, often matching the military in its popular
appeal. A Pew survey in 2013 found that the Su-
preme Court had an 80-percent approval rating
among respondents across the country.
The independent reputation cultivated by judg-
es during the early period of Pakistan’s return to
democracy has locked in incentives for continued
activist behavior by the institution as a whole.
Judges now actively seek public acclaim and hold
forth from the bench, delivering quips and obser-
vations that are reported on the country’s many
television news channels.
Political parties have played their part in the
consecration of the judiciary by seeking legitimacy
through its rulings and by relying on it to resolve
what are ostensibly political tussles. Ironically,
Sharif was guilty of exactly the same sin when he
petitioned the Supreme Court to disqualify the
PPP’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, for his
refusal to order the reopening of corruption cases
against his own party’s leader—the country’s then-
president, Asif Ali Zardari. In 2012, Sharif and
his party celebrated the court’s removal of Gillani
from office; clearly they did not foresee that an-
other political rival would enable the court to do
the same to them five years later.
Given its recent history, the odds of the court
staying away from a high-profile case like the one
stemming from the Panama Papers leak were very
low. The scandal gave the court another chance
to intervene in the public domain after a couple
of comparatively subdued years. The fact that the
case involved alleged graft, money laundering, and
other types of corruption by a prominent politician
increased its relevance to the judiciary.
From a sociological perspective, it is notable
that the higher judiciary, which includes the Su-
128 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2018
preme Court and the four High Courts, draws its
judges from the upper and upper-middle class
strata of urban society. It is likely that their ap-
proach—the selective use of suo motu powers and
their application of the law in such cases—is at
least partly shaped by the social background they
bring to the bench. Among the urban propertied
classes, commonplace views include a deep mis-
trust of democratic politics, the fetishization of
strongmen, and the urge to cleanse the system of a
venal political class.
A NARROWING WINDOW
While Sharif’s disqualification was certainly
not as egregious as an outright coup or any other
extraconstitutional intervention, the nature and
process of his removal amounts to another setback
for democracy in Pakistan. The two larger trends
that underpin recent events are fundamentally un-
democratic.
The military’s myriad ways of undermining Par-
liament and civilian government keep a perenni-
ally skewed civil-military imbalance tilting in its
favor. Its red lines in policy domains have never
been clearer: while civilians may enjoy greater ad-
ministrative authority at devolved levels of gov-
ernment, it is plain to see that the military enjoys
veto power over all important decision-making.
Since there is no immediate pressure to change,
this trend does not appear to be going away any-
time soon.
Similarly, the spread of judicial activism over
the past decade has kept the locus of authority
away from elected politicians and instead moved
it, partly at least, to the higher judiciary, a tightly
knit and highly insular institution. The courts
have taken to interpreting the Constitution in
expansive ways, striking down legislation that
violates judges’ interpretation of its basic tenets.
Sharif’s disqualification as head of his own party
in February 2018 was a clear example of the Su-
preme Court’s appetite for greater power within
the state apparatus, since it involved nullifying
parts of legislation that had been recently passed
by Parliament.
As much of the past decade shows, the out-
come of these two trends is periodic instability
and a barely functional democratic process mud-
dling along with heightened competition between
politicians on one side and the military and ju-
diciary on the other. For the country as a whole,
this is highly discouraging. Over time, one might
theoretically expect that democracy would create
greater space for more responsive and accountable
political parties to emerge—parties that could cul-
tivate stable social coalitions and deliver an issue-
based response to the demands of the electorate.
However, with lapses into periodic instability, the
time available for democracy to gain a surer foot-
ing in Pakistan is reduced considerably.
In an alternative universe where the Panama
Papers leak had not taken place, the PML-N would
have faced the electorate’s judgment on the basis
of its performance in power, with the opposition
seeking to highlight its shortcomings. Instead,
what is now likely to happen is a messier transi-
tion. The ruling party is under siege, its promi-
nent candidates in many rural constituencies are
looking to defect to save their own careers, and the
military and the judiciary retain their strong posi-
tions to influence future political developments.
Given this state of affairs, the public mood in
Pakistan has turned anxious and uncertain. There
are legitimate concerns that economic conditions
will continue to suffer due to such persistent po-
litical instability. For a country that is both in-
creasingly urbanized and now home to one of the
world’s largest youth populations, this prospect
stirs considerable consternation. As seen across
the world in recent years, unmet aspirations and
perceptions of political disenfranchisement and
economic deprivation often combine to produce
dangerous outcomes. If elite intrigue and power
machinations continue blocking the path toward a
responsive democracy, Pakistan could soon suffer
a similar fate. ■
Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction
prohibited without permission.