SUMMARY
The Government of Pakistan was first established in August 1947 when Pakistan gained its independence from Great Britain. Pakistan had been part of British India since 1858, together with today’s India and Bangladesh. Between 1947 and 1971 Pakistan was made up of two geographically separated entities, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, also called East Bengal. In 1971, the eastern parts were detached and became independent Bangladesh.
As the Government of Pakistan was established, the country remained part of the Commonwealth with the British monarch as the official head of state, while Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League and considered to be one of the founding fathers of Pakistan, became the country’s first political leader and governor-general. Liaquat Ali Khan, another high-ranking leader of the Muslim League, became prime minister. Khan struggled to shoulder the burden of stabilizing the newly independent state when Jinnah died in 1948 and was himself assassinated during a public speech in 1951.
Pakistan became an Islamic republic in 1956; the new constitution instated the president as the new head of state, while most of the executive powers were placed in the position of prime minister and with the unicameral parliament. Nevertheless, the first president of Pakistan and previous governor-general, Major General Iskander Mirza, outmaneuvered several prime ministers, and by October 1958, Mirza declared the suspension of the constitution and invoked martial law. However, Mirza’s attempt to give the prime minister post to one of his close associates in the army, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, backfired, and Khan successfully ousted Mirza in a coup. This initiated the first of several periods of military rule in Pakistan, which would last until 1971. Even though President Khan introduced something called “basic democracy” on the grass-root level, the real executive powers still resided with the military administration and bureaucrats surrounding Khan. The armed forces have continued to influence the politics of Pakistan heavily, even when formally not being part of the government. Nevertheless, subsequent periods of military rule took place between 1977 and 1988 and between 1999 and 2008.
In the chaotic and violent aftermath of Pakistan’s first national election in 1970, leading to the partition of Pakistan and the establishment of an independent Bangladesh in 1971, Ayub Khan’s successor, General Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan was forced to step down. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the center-left Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which had won the majority of votes in then West Pakistan, took over the presidency. By 1973, a new constitution was set in place, which reinstated a parliamentary democracy with the main executive powers residing with the prime minister. A bicameral parliament with a National Assembly and a Senate was also instated. At this time, Bhutto stepped down as president and took on the role of prime minister.
In the national election in 1977, Bhutto and the PPP was accused of electoral fraud by the opposition. The Pakistani armed forces subsequently put Bhutto in house arrest, later executing him, and General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq seized governmental power in 1978. During the following decade of military rule, an Islamization of both the political institutions and the judiciary system took place. Martial law was lifted in 1985, allowing political parties to reemerge, including the PPP now led by Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
As Zia ul-Haq was killed in an airplane explosion in 1988, national elections were held later that year. Even though the PPP did not manage to gain the most votes, the party had the most seats in the National Assembly. Benazir Bhutto was asked to lead a coalition government as prime minister, and she became the first woman to head a Muslim state. She held this position until 1990, and again between 1993 and 1996. However, on both occasions, her administration was forced to leave office. Allegations of corruption and incapacity to govern circulated, but ultimately it was pressure from the military that forced Bhutto to step down. Similar circumstances had forced the center-right Pakistan Muslim League (PLM-N) government, led by Nawaz Sharif, to leave in 1993. Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan and the political stage in 2007, after several years in exile, but was assassinated during a campaign in December of that year.
The PLM-N managed to gain a majority of the seats in the National Assembly in the elections in 1997, and Nawaz Sharif took up the position as prime minister once more. During 1998, General Pervez Musharraf became the Pakistani army chief, and in 1999, he led a successful military coup and seized governmental power. Musharraf took on the position as the Chief Executive of Pakistan during the first years of his military rule. In the parliamentary elections in 2002, where the opposition parties were severely restrained by the military forces, Musharraf became president with the civilian façade of the military regime, the center-right Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam, PML-Q), as his political ally. Musharraf managed to hold on to power until August 2008, when he was forced to resign facing impeachment following the creation of a coalition between the PPP and the PLM-N in the elections earlier the same year.
The new civilian government was led by PPP, and Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, who had taken over the leadership of the party after her murder, became president for the following five years. A number of different prime ministers served during this time, including Nawaz Sharif. During this period, steps were taken by both the government and by the leadership of the armed forces themselves, to decrease the influence of the military on Pakistan’s political life.
As Nawaz Sharif was forced to resign as prime minister in 2017, due to allegations of corruption, which had become known through the leaked Panama Papers, elections were held in July 2018. The center-left Tehreek-e-Insaf (Justice Movement, PTI) party, founded and led by former cricket player Imran Khan subsequently came to power. Imran Khan was replaced by Shehbaz Sharif from the PML-N in 2022, after loosing a no-confidence vote. The armed forces still have substantial political influence, and with around 650 000 active troops it is one of the largest armed forces in the world. In addition, Pakistan have an active nuclear program.
