Pakistan’s judiciary is pushing back on efforts to warp the country’s democracy

Rashid Husain Syed is a Toronto-based journalist and consultant who specializes in energy and politics, with an emphasis on the Middle East.

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Pakistan, the nuclear-armed country that is the fifth most populous in the world, is on the cusp of a revolution – at least, a judicial one.

The country’s powerful army generals have long considered themselves to be Pakistan’s ultimate saviours and protectors. But after more than two years of blatant control, the power of a few top military leaders to micromanage Pakistan’s political horizon is being challenged as the judiciary begins to assert itself.

On July 12, in an 8-5 majority decision, the Supreme Court of Pakistan declared that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party of incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan, was eligible for its due share of the parliamentary seats reserved for women and religious minorities. That ruling overturned the earlier decision by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to give the PTI’s seats to the army-engineered ruling coalition of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

The ruling was a major blow to Mr. Sharif, who was denied a powerful two-thirds parliamentary majority, as well as to the military. “The Supreme Court has undone a historic injustice” to the PTI, Pakistan’s premier daily newspaper Dawn wrote in its editorial this weekend. “It is now hoped that this judgment will preclude the kind of blatant engineering that defined this last general election. The government and establishment must not stand in the way of its implementation.”

“The order criticizes the ECP for its conduct, which has been detrimental to Pakistan’s democratic process,” constitutional lawyer Rida Hosain told Al-Jazeera. “The electoral watchdog has a constitutional duty to be independent and impartial, yet it acted against a major political party, unlawfully denying PTI its right to contest elections.”

As the Christian Science Monitor reported last month, “It has become something of an open secret in Pakistan that the legal cases against Mr. Khan are being driven by army leadership, long considered the puppeteers of Pakistan politics who historically found a willing partner in the senior judiciary. Yet that relationship has become increasingly fraught in recent months as the judiciary has sought to assert its independence.”

This reawakening has been a process, not a one-off event, and the latest Supreme Court majority decision is only the most recent – though also likely the most lethal – blow to the generals’ influence.

The judiciary’s renewed resolve began taking concrete shape when six of the eight judges of the Islamabad High Court wrote a joint letter in April that detailed the pressures they faced while hearing cases against Mr. Khan and his party. The judges alleged that the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Agency engaged in threats and acts of intimidation, including the kidnapping and torture of a judge’s relative and the installation of cameras in their bedrooms. In one case, the letter said, they were pressed to hear a case against Mr. Khan, even after a majority had decided that it was not maintainable.

A few weeks later, the then-chief justice of the Lahore High Court took a firm stand against the ECP, which was working to ensure that the petitions of Mr. Khan and his party, who were challenging the results of what they alleged was a rigged election in February, are only heard by a panel of judges, including retired ones. These judges are nominated by the ECP and are not accountable to any judicial authority.

Similarly, a lower-court judge who was hearing cases against Mr. Khan’s party’s workers, after allegations of violence during protests by PTI supporters on May 9, 2023, accused the intelligence agencies of trying to coerce him to decide against the PTI.

Some analysts believe that the Supreme Court’s decision was also intended to deny the government from getting a two-thirds majority, which would have allowed it to make constitutional amendments. The government was also believed to be considering an extension for Qazi Faez Isa, the current Chief Justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, who Mr. Khan has accused of being biased toward the PTI and pliant to the establishment’s wishes.

While those amendments have been thwarted, major questions remain. When will the incarcerated former prime minister be released from prison? When will the true will of the people of Pakistan be reflected in the parliament? And with the government announcing an appeal of the Supreme Court’s decision, as well as plans for an outright ban of the PTI for allegedly receiving foreign funds and organizing riots, will the ruling stand?

The outcome of these questions will determine who controls Pakistan – and whether it’s by ballot or, potentially, by bullet.