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Islamabad [Pakistan]Jan 15 (ANI): The Pakistani army has been known to tamper with democracy by plotting to overthrow a government and then supporting a proxy government in the country, Geo-politik reported.
On January 8, Imran Khan, former Pakistani prime minister and head of the Pakistan Justice Instigation (PTI), solemnly claimed that the powerful military establishment had not learned from past mistakes as the country was still engaged in “political engineering”.
Khan worries that this year’s general election will see the results of the Pakistani army’s unconstitutional involvement in designing the polls. As proof of his claim, he pointed to rumored factions of the Muttahida Qaumi movement merging with members of the Balochistan People’s Party (BAP) to join the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), according to Geopolitics.
All available evidence strongly points to the direct involvement of senior military officers in political engineering, but no one dares to say the obvious.
In Pakistan, the professional work of the military is generally held in high esteem and public acclaim. This sometimes creates a self-righteous attitude among officers who feel they have a monopoly on patriotism and everyone else is suspicious. Deep distrust between civilian and military leaders ensures a permanently dysfunctional state.
Notably, the military brought Khan to power in August 2018 through a “hybrid regime” experiment. According to Geo-politik, Rawalpindi continues to abuse its unlimited power and meddle in civilian politics despite an “official” pledge to keep the military out of politics.
With National Assembly elections fast approaching in Pakistan, the country’s leading politicians are being branded as ‘optional’ and ‘influential’, thus frantically looking for the right platform to align with themselves in order to ensure some political political power.
This process is often influenced by powerful unseen forces based in Islamabad and Rawalpindi that play a huge role in steering the political choices of these figures towards the party most likely to win.
For example, in the 2018 general election, Pakistan’s security establishment forced more than 20 elective MPs from South Punjab to back Imran Khan’s PTI to form a Punjab provincial government, Geo-politik reported.
While an official timetable for Pakistan’s National Assembly elections has yet to be announced, political activity has already begun in Balochistan, Karachi and southern Punjab, among other states.
Electors are reportedly assessing their electoral chances, while the military continues to work to influence the outcome of the polls. In South Punjab, elective students are reportedly waiting for guidance from “those in power” to take political action.
These “renegades” play an integral role in South Punjab’s electoral politics because, unlike the rest of the province, major parties such as the PML-N, PPP or PTI do not dominate compared to independent politicians.
According to Geo-politik, there is speculation that South Punjab may be planning to create a group like the Janoobi Punjab Suba Mahaz (JPSM), which emerged on the eve of the 2018 general election.
In Balochistan, former chief minister Aslam Raisani joined Maulana Fazl ur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) in December, despite having little in common with the party’s ideology.
He is not the only prominent Baloch political leader to join the JUI-F recently. Moreover, several provincial lawmakers from the BAP, which currently governs Balochistan, have switched to support the BJP under the close supervision of former Pakistani president and BJP veteran Asif Ali Zardari.
The BAP is nothing more than an ad hoc merger or coercion of different political parties, created by the Army agency during the 2018 elections to run Balochistan.
Now that its purpose has been served, the BAP will be disbanded before the next election and a new “puppet” agency will come to power in Balochistan, Geo-politik reported.
The unprecedented involvement of Pakistani security agencies in Balochistan has severely hampered the province’s political development and further alienated the province’s population.
In Karachi, efforts to unite the various factions of the MQM, including Bahadurabad, the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) and the Farooq Sattar bloc, continued under the supervision of Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori.
Tessori is a member of MQM-Pakistan (MQM-P). PSP chairman Syed Mustafa Kamal announced on January 12 that his party would join the MQM-P and Sattar bloc.
However, the pro-Altaf Hussein London faction is likely to be excluded from this effort. According to Geo-politik, there is no doubt that the ongoing political maneuvers in Karachi and the reunification of the different factions of the MQM are sanctioned by the military.
Therefore, the PDM government in Islamabad may not be able to survive for long considering that MQM and PPP are part of a coalition. It appears that former army commander-in-chief Qamar Javed Bajwa’s promise to keep the military out of politics has not materialized.
It is unrealistic to expect the security agencies to withdraw completely from Pakistan’s political sphere. In conclusion, the ongoing military-led political manipulation will further exacerbate political instability in Pakistan. (Arnie)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the body of content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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