Poll or no poll, military runs the show in Pakistan

As head of the military, Qamar Javed Bajwa is Pakistan’s most powerful man.

Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The main rivals to be Pakistan’s next prime minister have courted the ballot of one person in particular. As head of the military, Qamar Javed Bajwa is the country’s most powerful man.

The army has dismissed claims that it has influenced the election but whoever wins cannot make progress without military support.

Critics claim that the army is seeking to subvert democracy, keeping a fractious government divided as the generals claw back control over policy. That was the approach of several of General Bajwa’s predecessors, after all.

The army has ruled Pakistan for three of its seven decades since independence after several coups. The only government to complete a five-year term in office did so under the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf. No democratically elected prime minister has yet achieved the feat.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party and a main contender in the race, has shouldered the mantle of his murdered mother, Benazir, who was twice prime minister.

She was killed in a suicide bombing as she campaigned before the 2008 election and her family has always maintained Musharraf had a hand in the assassination, which he has denied.

Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was also prime minister, was toppled by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and executed. The general, Pakistan’s longest-serving leader, backed the rise of Nawaz Sharif.

Even this could not save that prime minister. His three terms were marked by tension with the military and he narrowly avoided execution when Musharraf ended his second term with a coup in 1999. He is now in prison.

Imran Khan has claimed the umpires of Pakistani politics will step back if he wins.

Instead, like so many before, the cricket star is likely to anger the generals sooner or later.

The Times