Continuing our series of articles that were not published by mainstream Pakistani media outlets here is an article by former Senator Afrasiab Khattak.
Here are a few paragraphs from the piece the rest can be found on the blog Alternative Perspectives http://www.alternativeperspectives.org/the-vanishing-freedoms/
The vanishing freedoms
Afrasiab Khattak
“The fiction of a civilian government has been cracking up under heavy burden of the reality of military control over the system during last few years. That the prolonged aggressive sit in in Islamabad in 2014 was scripted by elements in the security establishment was beyond any doubt as the sitting defense minister named names after the end of the aborted coup. The putschists had to beat a retreat, at least temporarily, in the face of a joint call by all political parties in the parliament for unity against anti democratic forces. But the federal government was considerably weakened and it had to concede vast swaths of governance, national security and foreign policy to the security establishment. From apex committees in all provinces for steering the anti terror campaign to manning checkpoints on the main roads through out the country, the army gradually came to occupy the driving seat in running the country in the era of war on terror. That the second installment of ambushing the civilian government would come from the judicial front was also predicted in advance by Javed Hashmi, a senior politician who parted ways with PTI in 2014 accusing it to be part of a future judicial coup plan.”
“So far the role of political parties has been disappointing in defending democratic freedoms. Their silence on the subject is deafening. They have failed to read the writing on the wall about the plan for fully controlled democracy even after the recent engineered Senate elections. Most of them are still busy in striking individual deals with the security establishment without realizing that vanishing of democratic freedoms for all practical purposes means end of democracy.”
