Why India needs to understand the new Pakistan| A Frontline Webinar

This is a good article.

” In Pakistan, a mightier military and a judiciary undone” by Salman Rafi Sheikh

https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-27amendment-constitution-military-asim-munir

Pakistan’s political logic will be permanently shaped by the imperatives of the military establishment. In practical terms, the country’s future is now inseparable from the path laid out by the army, and a militarised alignment is now codified into the constitution. Even if the PTI or any other civilian force somehow returns to power, it will be forced to operate within the boundaries set by the military, unable to undo these changes without the near-impossible feat of securing a two-thirds majority in a fragmented Parliament. Given the entrenched manipulation of elections and the military’s very well-known pervasive influence over political outcomes, such a majority is extremely unlikely.

To regain any semblance of the parliamentary democracy envisioned in Pakistan’s constitution of 1973, the opposition and civil society will have to rise above factionalism and partisan rivalries and present a united front to reclaim constitutionalism and push back against a system designed to render civilian authority subordinate. This will require strategic coordination, public mobilisation, secure digital activism and sustained international attention.

“Going back in time”

by Umair Javed (a professor of sociology at LUMS)

https://www.dawn.com/news/1956969/going-back-in-time

The tragedy here is the direction of change. Each successive Government of India Act enl­arged the space for representative politics, under strong pressure from mass movements of self-rule and independence. The political sphere of that time carried a variety of ideological currents, all of which sought an emancipated future — one in which viceregal authority would give way to the exercise of sovereignty by the people themselves.

Our direction is the opposite. Having enshrined the principles of democratic government and federalism in 1973 (reaffirmed in 2008), the state has now moved in the opposite direction. It has closed off key domains of governance from representative authority, shut off judicial review for its actions, and made parliament largely redundant in form, if not in appearance. Barring any resistance, the next step on this trajectory would take us further back into the late-19th century, when even provincial politics is deemed surplus to requirement. Let’s see what the 28th amendment has in store.