Is it hubris, or something more cynical, that drives the regime to lower the bar each time it gets a chance to set the country back on course?
In recent days, anti-terrorism courts have delivered sweeping convictions against elected leaders and political workers of the PTI, linked to the May 9, 2023 unrest. The sentences are severe — and the trials, critics argue, have been politically engineered, built on shaky or fabricated evidence, and conducted with scant regard for due process.
Among those convicted are the opposition leaders in both the National Assembly and the Senate, along with several lawmakers who now face disqualification under Article 63(1)(h) of the Constitution. The Election Commission has already moved with startling speed to de-notify some, including the opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly.
The sheer scale of this lawfare is unprecedented in Pakistan’s political history. Never before, under a supposedly democratic dispensation, have so many elected representatives been prosecuted — and convicted — as “terrorists.” It is a grim milestone, made more tragic by the fact that many of today’s power-holders once campaigned against exactly this kind of judicial and political manipulation. Judges who once railed against “judicial capture” now appear content to preside over it. Politicians who vowed to defend civil supremacy have abandoned principle at the first whiff of power.
The damage to the political fabric will take decades to repair, yet there is little sign of introspection among the civilians propping up this hybrid order. Outside the power circle, however, there are still voices willing to speak plainly. At its multiparty conference, the opposition demanded a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the collapse of the constitutional order and hold to account “judges, generals, and politicians” who violated the Constitution, undermined democracy, and usurped public rights. It also called for a new charter of democracy and the abolition of the “hybrid system” — a model of governance recently defended by the sitting defence minister.
If civil supremacy is truly the goal, this may be the only rational way forward. But history warns us to temper our hopes: Pakistan’s political class has repeatedly chosen alliances with unelected arbiters over solidarity with democratic forces. Even the PTI, now under siege, still seems to crave the favour of its tormentors more than the unity of its fellow victims.
This, in the end, remains our democracy’s fatal flaw — one that no court ruling or commission can fix until the will to stand apart from the shadows of power finally takes root.
