Pakistan’s Next Change Of Government? Why Shehbaz Sharif May Be On Borrowed Time – Analysis
Key Takeaways
Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif government, installed through military-influenced 2024 elections, is showing clear signs of drift amid economic stagnation, political unpopularity, deteriorating security, and inability to address major challenges, despite full military backing that has reduced parliament, the judiciary, and bureaucracy to rubber stamps.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi’s admission that the “system has collapsed,” coupled with military endorsement and speculation about further constitutional amendments (provincial reorganisation, altered resource sharing, and enhanced federal/military powers), signals that the establishment is actively considering a deeper “reset” that could further erode civilian authority.
Historical patterns suggest civilian governments in Pakistan typically last around three years; with Shehbaz approaching that mark, regime change appears increasingly likely, yet the military’s proposed solutions risk exacerbating ethnic tensions, provincial resistance, and governance problems rather than resolving them.
Signs of trouble for the civilian dispensation in Pakistan were evident months before former Prime Minister Imran Khan entered into a dispute with the then-Army chief, General Qamar Bajwa, in October 2021 over the transfer of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed. The military, which had brought Imran Khan to power, was deeply unhappy with the drift in governance, particularly in Punjab province. Repeated advice and suggestions urging Imran Khan to institute changes went unheeded, and the matter of the ISI chief proved to be merely the final trigger. Even so, government spokesmen and sympathetic media outlets continued to maintain that the military and the civilian government remained “on the same page.” Few doubted, however, that the countdown to the government’s demise had begun, though it would take over six months before Imran was ultimately ousted.
A similar pattern has been evident with the Shehbaz Sharif government, which owes its existence to the military’s manipulation of the 2024 general elections. Journalist Sohail Warraich has cautioned that despite appearing at the height of its powers, the government’s fortunes were set to decline from July onward — driven by economic stagnation and a lack of political direction. There has been considerable speculation that something will have to give, since the present state of affairs, in which nothing seems to be functioning, cannot continue indefinitely. The economy is in a morass; no investment is coming into the country; the regime remains politically unpopular; the security situation has continuously deteriorated; and the state simply lacks the resource base to face the looming challenges from the east (India), the west (Afghanistan), and the raging insurgencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The military has backed the government to the hilt and removed all constitutional and other impediments in its path — parliament has become little more than a rubber stamp, as have the judiciary and the bureaucracy. And yet, the government seems adrift, unable to get its act together either politically or economically.
It was against this backdrop that Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi made a striking admission on 30 July, saying that the “system has collapsed” in Pakistan. He went on to speak of the need to “reset the system” and to create more provinces in order to bring governance closer to the people. The following day, the spokesman for the Pakistan armed forces endorsed Naqvi’s remarks; notably, Naqvi is a close relative of Field Marshal Asim Munir, the army chief widely seen as Pakistan’s most powerful figure. As Munir’s nominee in the cabinet, Naqvi is widely seen as speaking for the military establishment within the civilian government. For many weeks, there has been intense speculation in Pakistan that the military establishment is planning to push a number of new constitutional amendments through Parliament. It appears that neutering the judiciary — partially through the 26th Amendment and more fully through the 27th Amendment, which also created a new constitutional post making the army chief head of all three armed services — did not fully serve the purpose or arrest the drift in the affairs of state. Hence, a further slew of amendments is reportedly being contemplated: these are expected to reorganise the provinces and amend the National Finance Commission award to give greater financial powers to the federal government, requiring provinces to accept not only a reduced share of the national pie but also contribute to items such as defence expenditure and debt servicing.
As things stand, there is very little clarity about what exactly Naqvi or the military establishment he speaks for mean by resetting the “system”. Is it just about reorganising the provinces and breaking them into smaller entities? Is it about replacing the current parliamentary system of government with a presidential one? Is it about using provincial reorganisation as a tool to empower local governments, which many Pakistanis — perhaps optimistically — see as a panacea for all governance issues? Is the reset about giving the military a formal role in government? Is it about turning Pakistan into a “hard state” by concentrating greater powers in the military’s hands, at the expense of civil liberties or whatever remains of them in the country? Is it about making Asim Munir president and converting the current nominal democracy into a full-fledged military-run autocracy, retaining a few democratic trappings to preserve the appearance of constitutional rule, when in fact it is constitutional militarism that has become the new ruling paradigm? Or is it all simply a way to pressure politicians who are resisting a new formula for resource allocation between the federal government and the provinces, so that the military can increase its own share of the national pie and significantly boost defence spending?
Whatever the real purpose behind Naqvi rattling the cage of Pakistan’s politicians, what is clear is that a reverse countdown has begun for the Shehbaz Sharif government. What should worry the Shehbaz government is the timing, which suggests that the end may not be far off. The average tenure of any civilian government in Pakistan is three years, give or take six months. It has now been two and a half years since the February 2024 election — widely seen as manipulated — that brought Shehbaz to power. In Pakistan, by the time a civilian government enters its third year in office, the discontent and disillusionment associated with its dysfunction tend to set in. The public and the military establishment alike grow impatient and begin looking for change. Trouble often arrives when it is least expected, and from quarters least anticipated. One of the abiding paradoxes of Pakistan’s power politics is that just when a government appears almost invulnerable, with no visible challenge or threat in sight, that is precisely the moment when a bolt from the blue strikes it, leaving it floundering and triggering its eventual demise.
How and when the regime change happens is a matter of detail. The path could be somewhat long — a few months — and convoluted, with twists, turns, and palace intrigues that would leave the Byzantines gasping in wonder; or it could come as a sudden, sharp guillotine. According to some unverified reports, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has been given a six-month deadline to either deliver on the military establishment’s wishes or face the consequences. As of now, there doesn’t seem to be any viable civilian alternative available to the military. That, however, will not last indefinitely — the military will find ways and means to forge an alternative as and when it feels the need for one. Imran Khan made the mistake of assuming he was irreplaceable in the Army’s eyes, on the grounds that there was much bad blood between General Bajwa and Nawaz Sharif for the two to work together. Today, few believe there is any real chance of Asim Munir and Imran Khan striking a deal. But politics makes for strange bedfellows, and what seems unthinkable today may well become entirely possible tomorrow.
The difficulty for Shehbaz Sharif is that even were he to capitulate entirely to the military’s demands and diktats — as he appears inclined to do, in the interest of self-preservation — this would not suffice to save him. The reason is that the solutions being proposed by the Army are not, in substance, solutions at all. Consequently, when matters fail to improve, he is likely to bear the blame. For now, in all likelihood, the two principal parties seen as accommodating the military — the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) — will register some protest and present the appearance of resisting its plans. Eventually, both are likely to fall in line with whatever the Army wants. Neither party nor their respective leaders appears to possess the political capital or the resolve to stand up to the military leadership’s wishes. Whatever resistance does emerge is more likely to originate from outside the mainstream political framework.
The traditional political forces in Pakistan, such as the PPP and PML-N, are now largely spent forces. Politics is increasingly being driven and directed by popular movements. One example of this was the massive protests in Sindh against the Army-backed plan to build six new canals — five drawing from the Indus River and one from the Sutlej — to irrigate the Cholistan desert in Punjab. The protests grew so large that the government was forced to put the project on hold pending consensus among the provinces.
Something similar could unfold on the issue of provincial reorganisation. In the smaller provinces, particularly Sindh, carving up the province — and converting parts of it, Karachi for instance, into a federally administered territory — is an explosive proposition. The smaller provinces are likely to view such plans with deep suspicion, seeing them as an assault on their identity and an attempt to subsume their distinct ethnic identities into a homogenised Pakistani identity effectively dominated by Punjabis, the country’s largest ethnic group. Already, two provinces — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan — are engulfed by raging insurgencies, and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) has grown restive over what it sees as Punjab’s continued domination. Under these circumstances, plans to create new provinces, redirect resources away from the provinces, and centralise greater powers with the federal government could well backfire on the military-dominated establishment. Far from resolving Pakistan’s deep-seated structural problems, the solutions being advanced by the country’s military and civilian leadership risk rendering Pakistan increasingly difficult to govern.