The law applies to everyone. A democratic society may grant some privileges to the holders of the highest offices, but, as John Rawls pointed out in his theory of justice, this is conditional on everyone having equal access to those offices. The principle sounds pretty clear. However, the complexities of public life are such that when politicians run afoul of the law, confusion tends to reign as to whether it is a case of good faith or political persecution. India just saw Raul Gandhi from the Congress party gets a stay from the Supreme Court on his conviction by a lower court for his alleged defamation of people called Modi. In the US, Donald Trump faces a battery of charges ranging from conspiring to defraud the US, obstructing an official proceeding and denying rights to citizens, all related to the seizure of his Capitol on January 2021, until the alleged robbery of the former president. of state secrets and false information about hush money paid to an adult film star as a business expense. While India is the largest modern democracy in the world, the United States is the oldest. Neither man’s judiciary is perfect, but both have significant confidence in their ability to differentiate false accusations from the truth when it comes to leaders in the dock. The same cannot be said of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country where former Prime Minister Imran Khan was accused of corruption in the sale of official gifts and jailed for it last week, an event that must be seen in the context of his confusing road to maturity as a democracy.
It is not just about free and fair elections. How freely a country’s independent institutions function reveals how mature it is. In Pakistan, however, the institution that, both visibly and invisibly, has had the most autonomy is its army. Rather than being answerable at all times to an elected authority, it is an establishment in its own right that has long sought to call the shots in theaters that do not have wars of the type for which it was created. So as Pakistan heads to the polls for its 342-seat National Assembly later this year, critics of the de facto regime have spied a hidden military hand in Khan’s woes who see the former prime minister as a target of the anger of the high command for change turns its back on them after coming to power in 2018 with their tacit endorsement. In 2022, the former cricketer was ousted as prime minister when he lost a floor test in Islamabad that was allegedly rigged against him by the armed forces based in Rawalpindi, a short distance away. Since then, he has mixed his Islamist tinge of populist politics with calls to defend the popular will from military interference. According to his preferred narrative, a plot was hatched to prevent him from assuming his rightful role as the leader of Pakistan. His prison sentence has been taken by his supporters as proof of this. Unless he wins an appeal, he cannot stand for election for five years, even though his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) could still get sympathy votes as a party. The poor state of Pakistan’s economy may also favor PTI.
Given a shared border and a longstanding dispute over its northern part, New Delhi has no choice but to keep a close eye on Pakistani power plays. While the military’s dominance was once seen as offering us clarity on who signed the key to any peace pact, elected leaders in charge of their affairs will better serve both interests. The brunt of a military-run state is borne by the people who can expect a better life if resource allocation is freed from military reckoning. Khan’s religious politics are baffling, to be sure, but his judgment must receive a fair review, just as Pakistan’s polls must reflect real choices.
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Updated: Aug 07, 2023, 09:03 pm IST
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