Pakistan has been reeling under a hybrid martial law regime which has led the country’s economy to sink but the military is nevertheless bent on keeping their chosen man afloat, a report asserted.
For all practical purposes related to running a nation like Pakistan, it is hard to tell where the military’s rule ends and where Prime Minister Imran Khan’s begins, the report by International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS), an international think-tank said.
The Pakistani government runs at the mercy of the Pakistani army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the report said, adding that, the 2018 election was rigged by the Pakistani Army to elect a puppet government under Imran Khan.
Within just two years of coming into power, Imran Khan handed over the reins of the country virtually in the hands of the Pakistan military that not just took over the country’s politics but also its economy and what little was left of the judiciary, the report further said.
Pakistan’s political structure is a constitutionally democratic republic based on an elected form of governance. However, the country has had to survive three military coups under four different military rulers since its independence in 1947.
Over the years, the influence of the Pakistan military on decision-making bodies has only exacerbated and hasn’t reduced, suggestive of the fact that the army has managed to increase its presence and influence in more subtle but prominent ways, the report said.
The report went on to cite ever-rising inflation and poverty, the blasphemy law of Pakistan, and the disappearances of Baloch and Sindhi nationalists as examples of the Pakistani Army’s overreach and ineptitude in handling the nation’s affairs.
Neither the common man is safe here, nor is the person who tries to protect him, the report said, referring to the country’s media and social activists.
Despite being a market to more than 500 newspapers and periodicals, Pakistan’s vibrant media faces challenges after being restricted throughout the preceding decade, the report said, adding, press freedom has been put in shackles while ethnic insurgency, extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances, mass abductions continue to haunt the mankind.
Pakistan is a nation full of military generals who retired and settled abroad while the country remains a poor starving nation where the rich and mighty hardly pay any taxes and a common man struggles to put things on his plate, the report said, concluding that, in all its dirty games, Pakistan has become a country still searching its identity in the Islamic world.