In Pakistan, power never really changes hands — it only changes costume. Between the generals’ discipline and the people’s defiance lies a democracy permanently on trial.

Each generation is promised transformation, yet each time the faces are fresher, the slogans louder, but the script unchanged: a populist rises on a wave of public frustration, the state tightens its grip, and the democratic promise is deferred once more.

From the silenced mandate of Bengali voters in 1970 to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s mass rallies in the 1970s to today’s throttled social media feeds, the confrontation between populism and the hard state has shaped Pakistan’s political destiny. But behind the uniforms and the revolutionary rhetoric sits a deeper betrayal — the willingness of civilian politicians, who claim to defend democracy, to side with entrenched power when it suits them.

When Bhutto Stood with the Generals

In 1970, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman won an unambiguous mandate. Millions in East Pakistan believed that, at last, the state would listen. Instead of a peaceful transfer of power, it was blocked. Bhutto, himself a magnetic populist from the western wing, refused to share authority. Backed by General Yahya Khan’s regime, he helped thwart the democratic outcome.

What followed was catastrophe: tanks rolled, bombs fell, and Pakistan split. Bangladesh was born out of that moment — not only out of the brutal campaign against Bengalis, but out of the negation of what was arguably Pakistan’s first and only fully democratic moment. Ordinary citizens wanted bread, dignity, and a voice; the state replied with bullets and rhetoric about national unity. That was the first lesson in how Pakistan’s politicians often choose the barracks over the ballot.

When Faith Became a Tool of Power

A few years later, Bhutto became the quarry rather than the hunter. His brand of populism and state-led economic experiments unsettled the entrenched elite. The 1977 protests by the Pakistan National Alliance, wrapped in the pious language of “Nizam-e-Mustafa,” demanded an Islamic order and cast Bhutto as the usurper.

Behind the scenes, General Zia-ul-Haq and the military waited. When Zia seized power, the clerics and conservative parties who had agitated against Bhutto embraced the coup as deliverance. For the next eleven years, Pakistan lived under martial law clothed as moral purification. Bhutto was hanged, democracy was interred, and mosque pulpits echoed with sermons about obedience and order. Yet in living rooms across the country, people whispered the same question: why do our own politicians keep handing the generals the keys?

When Democracy Became a Bargain

That question lingers today. Imran Khan’s populism — part anti-corruption zeal, part moral crusade — tapped into the fury of millions who felt cheated by family dynasties and an indifferent bureaucracy. But once Khan quarreled with the military that had helped him ascend, the old coalition reappeared: Nawaz Sharif, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Pakistan Democratic Movement aligned with the establishment to marginalize him.

Field Marshal Asim Munir has since repositioned Pakistan abroad — courting Washington, Beijing, Riyadh, even keeping lines open with Tehran — and won praise from figures like Donald Trump. But the real test is domestic. Munir presides over an expanded, “hybrid” power structure fortified by a compliant judiciary, suffocating media controls, and a sweeping crackdown on the principal opposition. At the same time, Pakistan confronts economic drift, deepening poverty, insurgencies on its western flank, friction over Afghan refugees, and a restless youth that idolizes a jailed populist. Diplomatic plaudits and investment roadshows may provide breathing space, but political legitimacy and structural reform remain far more elusive.

Under Munir, the hard state has turned its full machinery on Khan and his base — arrests, fast-track trials, censorship, intimidation. Politicians call it “saving democracy.” On the streets, many Pakistanis see something more familiar: yet another round of a power game that never ends.

The Endless Loop

Every generation of Pakistanis grows up believing that this time the system will crack open. And every time, the pattern reasserts itself: populists promise dignity, generals promise stability, and civilian politicians trade principle for position.
Citizens are left as spectators to a tug-of-war above their heads. Institutions are hollowed out, elections become ritualized performances, and cynicism hardens. “It doesn’t matter who wins,” an old rickshaw driver in Lahore once said, “because the game is fixed before it starts.” That was not a conspiracy theory; it was political experience distilled.

Who Really Wins?

If history is a guide, the hard state will win again — but only provisionally. Its discipline, coercive reach, and international acceptability give it an advantage, but not the moral authority that sustains nations. Populists, for all their excesses, keep returning because they speak to something real: the desire for fairness, recognition, and participation in a country where the state often feels remote and punitive.

Yet populism on its own can’t rescue Pakistan. Without durable institutions, it burns hot and fast, leaving behind disillusionment. Mujib’s democratic triumph ended in blood and separation, Bhutto’s charisma curdled into repression, and Khan’s defiance risks becoming another personality-centered movement.

What Pakistan needs is not another savior or another “guided” democracy. It needs a political compact that reconciles passion with process, popular mandate with constitutionalism, and authority with accountability. Until that bargain is struck, the country will keep spinning in the same cycle — rebellion met by repression, hope smothered by fear.

And somewhere between the populist’s promise and the general’s order, the ordinary Pakistani will keep asking the only question that matters: when will the people themselves finally win?