Pakistan election raises fears of 'creeping coup'
Published 23 July 2018
A three-pronged approach is in evidence.
First, as some legal experts have observed, the courts have selectively applied the law to clip the wings of the outgoing government, thereby creating an advantage for its rivals.
On Sunday, Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court said that the ISI intelligence service was interfering in the judiciary, and had pressured judges not to release convicted ex-PM Nawaz Sharif ahead of the vote.
Mr Sharif was disqualified from office by the Supreme Court on questionable grounds last year, and has since been sentenced to 10 years in jail by a trial court, in a ruling which one legal expert described as an embarrassment to his community.
According to the Dawn newspaper, Justice Siddiqui told the Rawalpindi Bar Association he was not afraid of speaking out against the powerful ISI, saying: "I am not afraid even if I am assassinated."
Second, authorities have either looked the other way as banned militant groups have joined the election process, or have actively helped them to do so.
And third, the military has been given what many call an obscenely large role in administering the voting process on election day.
Many candidates from Mr Sharif's PML-N have been lured to leave the party and either join the PTI party of rival and former cricketer Imran Khan, or stand as independents.
There is evidence that those who have resisted such demands have faced physical violence, had their businesses attacked or have been
disqualified from office.
More recently, Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the founder of the Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) militant group, ended his long hibernation to announce his support for Imran Khan's PTI party. He is on a US terrorism black list.
Taken together, all of these moves point to a scenario where left-wing or pro-democracy parties are being squeezed by legal or physical threats.
This has left the field open for Imran Khan's PTI party and the religious extremists.
