Newsweek published an extended interview with Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif on Saturday in which this official repeatedly returned to the state of democracy in his country. This de facto theme pervades the entire text since he continually referenced this fall’s elections as supposedly being the key to resolving Pakistan’s economic crisis. Asif insists that they’ll be free and fair without any meddling from his country’s military-intelligence structures, The Establishment, but this isn’t true at all.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan (IK) was deposed in April 2022’s post-modern coup precisely because The Establishment’s leading representative at the time, former Chief Of Army StaffQamar Javed Bajwa, colluded with his domestic opponents to oust him after first securing tacit American approval. Pakistan then entered into a series of cascading crises that continue to this day, with its economic one being the focus of considerable international attention due to the country’s potentially impending bankruptcy.
Read more: Pakistan, Iran agree to expand cooperation in diverse areas
Understanding the matter better
Political stability is the prerequisite for resolving the economic crisis from which the others have largely stemmed, but The Establishment refused to allow truly free and fair early elections like IK and his supporters requested because then their post-modern coup would have been for naught. Those who carried out that regime change have financial, ideological, personal, and professional stakes in preventing his return to office, which explains why they’ve so passionately opposed him since then.
The approximately 18 months between IK’s removal in April 2022 and the next scheduled national elections in fall of this year were supposed to give The Establishment enough time to meddle in Pakistan’s democratic process to ensure that he doesn’t win. This was first done through indirect means by having their media proxies falsely allege that there was supposedly no basis to the oil deal talks that he claimed to have held with President Putin during his trip to Moscow in late February 2022.
The associated innuendo was that his claim of being overthrown by an American-approved but superficially “democratic” plot as punishment for his independent foreign policy and especially the focus that he gave towards expanding ties with Russia was devoid of substance, thus making him a conspiracy theorist. When that failed to manipulate the population’s perceptions about the post-modern coup, The Establishment then had its media proxies allege that he was embroiled in corruption schemes.
That narrative tactic also failed, which incensed his supporters even more than the preceding one implying that he’s a conspiracy theorist since they regarded it as an unprincipled attack against his personal integrity. They accordingly sought to peacefully march on Islamabad in May 2022 to support the holding of truly free and fair early elections for resolving their country’s political crisis, which they compellingly argued is required in order to effectively address its economic one.
The regime regrettably refused to comply with their request and savagely sicced its goons on them in a desperate attempt to intimidate people into dropping their support for IK’s now-opposition PTI. As is the trend, that also failed and even dramatically backfired as evidenced by the party winning a spree of by-elections from that summer onwards, which proved their genuinely grassroots popularity. These outcomes suggested that PTI would sweep its opponents in truly free and fair national elections.
Read more: Pakistani Americans raise Pakistan’s human rights issue with 300 HR organizations worldwide
Instead of the Pakistani people fearing The Establishment, it was now The Establishment that feared the Pakistani people, which is why they then ramped up its persecution of them. This took the form of abducting certain PTI members, assassinating the famous dissident journalist Arshad Sharif, and even attempting the assassination of IK in early November. After failing to kill him, they then employed “lawfare” with the intent of banning him from running for re-election.
The way forward
This next phase in The Establishment’s Hybrid War on Pakistan culminated in their abduction of IK in early May that then prompted a spontaneous spree of protests, which PTI claims even included false flag attacks against military installations carried out by the regime’s goons in order to discredit the party. Immediately afterwards, hundreds of PTI members were pressured to “defect” from the party while thousands of their supporters were imprisoned, all with a wink and a nod from the West.
The Establishment’s “political engineering” project is now nearing completion since their proxy Shehbaz Sharif just proposed the return of his self-exiled elder brother so that he can resume leading the regime’s most powerful coalition party and thus run as premier for a fourth time. Nawaz Sharif used to be one of The Establishment’s enemies but those two became allies after their proverbial “deal with the devil” that was agreed to with America’s blessing in order to manufacture the “democratic” optics of IK’s ouster.
The Establishment’s reward for the role that Nawaz’s party played through his younger brother Shehbaz in the post-modern coup and everything that came after will likely be the reversal of his lifetime disqualification from political office so that he can rule Pakistan once again after the next elections. The deep-seated hatred that many Pakistanis have for him means that this outcome can only be achieved through defrauding the vote and manipulating the coalition talks that come afterward.
Absolutely nothing about these upcoming elections will be free or fair, and the state of democracy in Pakistan is nonexistent after everything that’s happened since April 2022’s post-modern coup. This context exposes the true purpose of Asif’s interview with Newsweek, which is the regime’s latest high-profile international media appearance aimed at misleading the global public about recent events. They want the world to give them a free pass for defiling democracy, but many activists will still call them out.