While Rawalpindi will outrightly reject the popular quip that while it has never won a war, the Pakistan army has never ever lost an election, but Pakistan’s recent election results has univocally endorsed this unflattering observation yet once again. So, instead of dwelling on the Pakistan army’s poor war record, it’s time to celebrate Rawalpindi’s innate ability to continuously ‘select’ prime ministers through the ballot-a feat that no other army in any democracy has been able to achieve.

The fact that none of the 22 Pakistani prime ministers in 75 years of the country’s existence have ever completed his/her stipulated five year tenure clearly indicates rampant manipulation of the legislature by Pakistan’s powerful army. And the Pakistan army chief’s unparalleled control over national affairs can be gauged by an unnamed “former top US diplomat in Islamabad” who recently told Time magazine that “When we had a [crisis], we didn’t call the prime minister—we called the Chief of Army Staff.”

Former army officer Maj Gen Iskander Mirza who replaced Ghulam Muhammad as Pakistan’s fourth Governor General in 1956 and later became the country’s first President, ushered-in the concept of ‘controlled democracy’. This was nothing but a hybrid system based on the perverse premise that governance is too important a matter to be left to politicians and as such they were required to work under the army’s supervision.

Gen [later Field Marshal] Ayub Khan who ousted Mirza through a coup went on to legitimise his dictatorship,........

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