Arun Anand
When a state alters the rules that govern it, the transformation can arrive with force—or with formality. Pakistan’s 27th Amendment represents the latter: a political restructuring that wields the authority of a coup but cloaks it in legality. Rather than suspending the constitution or dissolving parliament, it reshapes the constitution from within, erasing previous checks on military power. That distinction is crucial—one disrupts the system; the other remakes it. At the heart of this recalibration stands Asim Munir. His promotion to Field Marshal and the proposed establishment of a Chief of Defence Forces position do more than elevate his career—they institutionalize what was long an informal dominance. Unlike Ayub, Zia, or Musharraf, who ruled by toppling constitutions, today’s strategy seeks to embed military supremacy within the constitutional framework itself—ensuring that, in the future, the army can govern without the need to overthrow.
The change is deceptively small in language and vast in consequence. Replace one title with another; place all services under a single command; harden immunities around senior officers; tweak judicial mechanisms so the courts have less room to operate free of executive pressure. Each clause reads like technocratic housekeeping. Taken together, they create a new architecture: an army whose institutional primacy is not merely tolerated but constitutionally protected. That is legal militarism rather than extra-legal rule. This is not an academic quarrel over drafting. It is a political settlement about who counts as the ultimate arbiter of public affairs. Under the old ambiguity, civilian leaders could plausibly claim the last word, even while the military shaped the range of choices behind the scenes. The amendment seeks to collapse that ambiguity in one direction.
Why would civilian parties, visibly weakened and electorally vulnerable at times, agree to such a reconfiguration? The motives are painfully direct. Pakistan’s political class operates in a narrow corridor: economic collapse, fragmented coalitions, a restive opposition, and a media space that oscillates between sensationalism and censorship. Under these pressures, cohabitation with the military promises immediate stability. It keeps riots at bay, opens channels to patronage, and provides a shield against judicial harassment or street mobilisation. Short-term survival, in other words, is a powerful incentive. Yet political survival bought by reliance on the barracks is a pyrrhic achievement. Civilian parties have historically gained legitimacy by standing up to military overreach. Opposition to the establishment, even when risky, has often been the most reliable source of political capital. When a leader defies the generals and survives, that defiance becomes a badge of authenticity. By contrast, parties that appear to defend or normalise the military’s dominance surrender the claim to be an alternative. They transform from contesting forces into managers within a narrower, military-shaped consensus.
This is the arithmetic of erosion. Short-term gains for the party in power can lead to long-term erosion of its moral and political standing. Consent, in this context, is not neutrality; it is a transfer of legitimacy. A constitution stamped by the military’s imprimatur becomes less a shield of pluralism than a vehicle for managed politics. Democracies do not die in dramatic moments alone; they wither when the forms of democracy remain but their essence, the capacity of political actors to challenge and to be challenged on equal footing, is hollowed out. Those who enable this constitutional realignment may imagine that they will keep the benefits: stability, access to resources, and the ability to govern without constant confrontation. But history is unsparing about such bargains. Iskander Mirza appointed Ayub and found himself dispossessed within days. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who navigated the generals’ world, was later tried and executed under military rule. Nawaz Sharif’s flirtation with the military ended in exile. Power that is lent by a stronger institution is rarely returned intact.
The amendment also alters the foundation upon which other institutions stand. The judiciary, already a site of contestation, risks becoming a subsidiary player if a new constitutional forum strips the Supreme Court of powers or if transfer mechanisms for judges are altered to reduce their independence. Provinces that won space under the 18th Amendment see their gains threatened if federal competencies are recentralised or if finances are reconstituted in ways that favour central control. The fragmentation of federal bargains bolsters local grievances, and these grievances become fuel for instability, precisely the outcome the army claims to preempt.
There is a particular irony to the present moment that is worth stressing. Civilian politicians once drew their energy from popular resistance to an overbearing establishment. That very act of resistance could convert electoral weakness into credible leadership. Today, however, many politicians choose acquiescence because the immediate costs of resistance, jail, economic disruption, and the threat of engineered crises look intolerable. They trade a precarious moral authority for a steady foothold in the office. The problem is that this lease rarely extends beyond the lifetime of a political cycle, and its renewal depends on the goodwill of the institution whose favour they bought.
And yet the public mood complicates any neat diagnosis of decline. Ordinary Pakistanis are weary; years of economic pain and political turbulence have dulled their appetite for dramatic confrontation. Some will welcome the promise of order; others will shrug their shoulders. That fatigue provides the ideal conditions for legalised domination: the population tolerates constraint for the promise of relief. But tolerance is not acquiescence; it is the brittle glue that holds an unstable settlement together until it snaps.
When Munir leaves the scene, and he will, as all men do, the institution he helped constitutionalise will remain. The following chief benefits from a script rewritten to favour the uniform, drawing authority from not just force but law. Undoing that script will require more than an election or a public outcry; it will demand a sustained political project that reconstructs constitutional checks, reenergises provincial autonomy, and restores judicial independence. That project is possible but arduous; it requires actors willing to risk more than a short-term office. History’s lesson is stark: military dominance dressed as legality is harder to overthrow than military dominance that operates outside the law. Coups create ruptures; constitutionalised power creates permanence. That permanence is the danger Pakistan now confronts. Civilian leaders may survive one more term by stitching themselves to the armour of the state. But in doing so, they risk leaving their successor a hollowed democracy in which elections occur. Still, choices are preordained, institutions exist in form but not in force, and public legitimacy belongs more to the barracks than to the ballot.
If Pakistan is to reclaim a civilian future, the task is not merely to defeat a law in court or to rally people to the streets. It is to rebuild the conditions under which political actors can contest power on their own terms: functional parties with roots in society, a judiciary that can adjudicate without fear, and provincial institutions that can defend local interests. Without those pillars, the 27th Amendment will not just make one man powerful; it will recalibrate a nation to a default of managed politics, a country where the Constitution still exists on paper but where democracy, clause by clause, has been quietly transformed.
(Author is a writing fellow with US based think-tank Middle East Forum)
