Pakistan election raises fears of 'creeping coup'

[El Sidd]

No
Foundation of democracy is now solid deep in to ground. So no coup in the offing.

Who asked you? I asked someone else.
Go wait in line.

 

[HRK]

Middle finger to EVERYONE who are not accepting the political evolution of Pakistan.

and for all of our well wishers in the east enjoy this balochi folk song

specially this part

And I have suffered so much grief (من کشّتگ واری)
This land is fertile and abundant (اے ڈگار پلکیں)
And Quetta is our home (کوئٹہ مئے ملک انت)
That my heart just melts to see it (دل منی آپ انت)
Laila, I willingly give up my life for you (لیلیٰ شنک لیلیٰ)

 

[greenblooded]

No
Foundation of democracy is now solid deep in to ground. So no coup in the offing.

wah
what is with you Indians obsessed with pakistan and its military and especially nawaz sharif.Dont you have any else to do.Most of us don't even bother with whats happening in india.
Toilet to hai nahi india me lekin pakistan ki complex problems pe point of view zaroor hota hai.

 

[RIP Pak LAW]

this topic only deserve this reply:

Hahahahahhahaha

 

[Dash]

Pakistanis will cheer BBC when it has become vocal against India. The point is BBC is neither Indian nor Pakistani favored. They themselves are a bunch of leftist. So bringing India in the middle is pointless.

 

[maximuswarrior]

Foreign agencies regard any political entity as anti army as the right choice. This is their narrative.

Their aim is to bankrupt Pakistan and balkanize it and let corrupt mafia gangsters rule over the rest. This is the africa strategy. This why they are undermining the democratic process and downplaying nationalist politicans.

I hope you Pakistanis make the right choice when you go to the polls otherwise goodbye strong Pakistan and hello imf bankrupt rump states denuclearized for money and survival.

Couldn't agree more.

Time has come for nationalistic Pakistanis to give a big middle finger to the foreign entities by voting for change.

The Western and Indian media are having sleepless nights with IK leading the polls. The news articles and dooms day scenarios are hilarious.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44924389

In its 70-year history, Pakistan has alternated between quasi-democracy and pure military rule. In the process it has become embroiled in international conflicts and morphed into a home base for Islamist militancy.

Over the past decade, Pakistanis have witnessed democracy at its most undiluted thus far, but it's now under threat from what some say appears to be a "democratic coup" of sorts.

And just as in the past, the country's powerful military establishment remains the chief suspect behind the fresh round of political manipulation.

In the past, the military used to either stage a direct coup or use special powers to sack an elected government and then manipulate elections to ensure it wasn't re-elected.

In 2008, those special powers were done away with, leading to a first in 2013: an elected government completing its five-year term.

But since then the tide appears to have reversed, and critics say the establishment is resorting to more primitive tactics to recover its edge.
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 rolein administering the voting process on election day.
The first two stages have already unfolded enough for one to see their preliminary results.

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.

Other parties with a stake in undiluted democracy, such as the PPP party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are also under threat. The party is now led by her widower, former President Asif Zardari, and fronted by their son, Bilawal Zardari Bhutto.

Some PPP leaders have been named in renewed money-laundering allegations, while authorities in the field have been accused of disrupting its election campaign. The party, as well as other secular groups, also faces the prospect of militant attacks.

One such party, the leftist Awami National Party, lost a prime candidate in a suicide attack in Peshawar last week. Two more candidates, including one from the PTI, have since been killed in similar attacks.

In Balochistan, a secular candidate, Gizen Marri, has been battling travel restrictions and house arrest, while a man linked by many to sectarian militancy, Shafiq Mengal, is free to stand for election in a neighbouring constituency.

Mr Marri is being stopped probably because of his strong views on provincial rights, an idea which runs contrary to the military's strictly centrist approach.

But Mr Mengal's reported links to the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant group and his alleged involvement in several attacks in Balochistan are being ignored, secular parties say, apparently because he has been acting as the military's proxy against Baloch nationalists.

The JuD group of Hafiz Saeed, a militant with a US bounty on his head, is running candidates under a different party banner

In June, Pakistan removed another leader with LeJ links, Maulana Mohammad Ahmad Ludhianvi, from its terror watch list, apparently to free him up to lead his group in the election campaign, which it is contesting under a different name.

The Jamatud Dawa (JuD) group, whose leader Hafiz Saeed is on a UN terror blacklist, has also been allowed to field candidates under the banner of a different party.

Mr Saeed is accused of being behind co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people in November 2008.

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.

If this is any guide to the probable outcome, the aim appears to be to ensure no clear mandate for any one party, a result which the establishment can then manipulate to determine who the next prime minister will be.

And since all of this is being done in plain sight, the media has been put under pressure - by unidentified authorities - to offer only selective coverage of events.

So while on the surface the country still seems to be going through the motions of democracy, many say that what is actually happening is far from democratic.

A former senator and columnist, Afrasiab Khattak, has called it a "creeping coup."

This alleged effort has been "conceived by the deep state [meaning the military] and midwifed by the judiciary", he wrote in a recent newspaper column.

And this has led, he said, to a "fascist-like strangulation of democratic freedoms and the media".

The author of this article (Mohammad Ilyas Khan) is a renowned PML-N supporter and a passionate Pak army hater.

Are we surprised by his hateful words? I don't think so.

https://twitter.com/MohammadIlyasKh?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

 

[TMA]

There will be no coup. Tomorrow there will be funeral of nawaz sharif's politics agent of india and godfather of all that is corrupt.

انشاءاللہ

 

[Fekay]

When the detractors start to suffer from diarrhea, that’s when you know the direction is right.

 

[graphican]

One ISI, One Pakistan Army, and the entire world seem to pee their pants wet in fear.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

MI6/MI5 runs British deep state.
CIA/NSA runs American deep state.
RAW runs Indian deep state.
Mossad runs Isreali deep state.

So what is the fking problem when ISI runs Pakistani deep state?

 

[El Sidd]

MI6/MI5 runs British deep state.
CIA/NSA runs American deep state.
RAW runs Indian deep state.
Mossad runs Isreali deep state.

So what is the fking problem when ISI runs Pakistani deep state?

Its because you are Muslim and you have the Bomb.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

Its because you are Muslim and you have the Bomb.

Let them answer this .

 

[LASER1]

RAW runs Indian deep state.

RAW does not. There is no deep state in India, neither we have had military coups. All the countries you mentioned never had any coups.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44924389

In its 70-year history, Pakistan has alternated between quasi-democracy and pure military rule. In the process it has become embroiled in international conflicts and morphed into a home base for Islamist militancy.

Over the past decade, Pakistanis have witnessed democracy at its most undiluted thus far, but it's now under threat from what some say appears to be a "democratic coup" of sorts.

And just as in the past, the country's powerful military establishment remains the chief suspect behind the fresh round of political manipulation.

In the past, the military used to either stage a direct coup or use special powers to sack an elected government and then manipulate elections to ensure it wasn't re-elected.

In 2008, those special powers were done away with, leading to a first in 2013: an elected government completing its five-year term.

But since then the tide appears to have reversed, and critics say the establishment is resorting to more primitive tactics to recover its edge.
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 rolein administering the voting process on election day.
The first two stages have already unfolded enough for one to see their preliminary results.

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.

Other parties with a stake in undiluted democracy, such as the PPP party of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, are also under threat. The party is now led by her widower, former President Asif Zardari, and fronted by their son, Bilawal Zardari Bhutto.

Some PPP leaders have been named in renewed money-laundering allegations, while authorities in the field have been accused of disrupting its election campaign. The party, as well as other secular groups, also faces the prospect of militant attacks.

One such party, the leftist Awami National Party, lost a prime candidate in a suicide attack in Peshawar last week. Two more candidates, including one from the PTI, have since been killed in similar attacks.

In Balochistan, a secular candidate, Gizen Marri, has been battling travel restrictions and house arrest, while a man linked by many to sectarian militancy, Shafiq Mengal, is free to stand for election in a neighbouring constituency.

Mr Marri is being stopped probably because of his strong views on provincial rights, an idea which runs contrary to the military's strictly centrist approach.

But Mr Mengal's reported links to the sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant group and his alleged involvement in several attacks in Balochistan are being ignored, secular parties say, apparently because he has been acting as the military's proxy against Baloch nationalists.

The JuD group of Hafiz Saeed, a militant with a US bounty on his head, is running candidates under a different party banner

In June, Pakistan removed another leader with LeJ links, Maulana Mohammad Ahmad Ludhianvi, from its terror watch list, apparently to free him up to lead his group in the election campaign, which it is contesting under a different name.

The Jamatud Dawa (JuD) group, whose leader Hafiz Saeed is on a UN terror blacklist, has also been allowed to field candidates under the banner of a different party.

Mr Saeed is accused of being behind co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people in November 2008.

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.

If this is any guide to the probable outcome, the aim appears to be to ensure no clear mandate for any one party, a result which the establishment can then manipulate to determine who the next prime minister will be.

And since all of this is being done in plain sight, the media has been put under pressure - by unidentified authorities - to offer only selective coverage of events.

So while on the surface the country still seems to be going through the motions of democracy, many say that what is actually happening is far from democratic.

A former senator and columnist, Afrasiab Khattak, has called it a "creeping coup."

This alleged effort has been "conceived by the deep state [meaning the military] and midwifed by the judiciary", he wrote in a recent newspaper column.

And this has led, he said, to a "fascist-like strangulation of democratic freedoms and the media".

You being one of the sensible indian members .. id like to ask you what you personally think about people like nawaz and even this IHC Judge? The judge is a doofus... his actions speak for themselves...

He was one of the lawyers who showered petals on Mumtaz qadri, killer of Former CM Panjab Salman Taseer!

This guy has graft allegations against him, penalties of which would lead to his retirement.

This judge is pro blasphemy laws.

His brother contests elections from PMLN.

 

[Taimoor Khan]

RAW does not. There is no deep state in India, neither we have had military coups. All the countries you mentioned never had any coups.

No they don't , they simply kill their leaders if they don't toe the line. HINT: JFK.

As for RAW, it is your deep state and it pulls the strings from behind the scene. All your leaders obey like obedient servants so no need for coups.

You being one of the sensible indian members .. id like to ask you what you personally think about people like nawaz and even this IHC Judge? The judge is a doofus... his actions speak for themselves...

He was one of the lawyers who showered petals on Mumtaz qadri, killer of Former CM Panjab Salman Taseer!

This guy has graft allegations against him, penalties of which would lead to his retirement.

This judge is pro blasphemy laws.

His brother contests elections from PMLN.

I heard his bother was caught working with the blackwater in Pakistan a while back. Plus he is relative to Irfan Siddique, Nawaz shareef's right testicle.