Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and a close aide of ruling PML-N president and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has said the country is being governed under a “hybrid model” in which the military enjoys the major power share.

This is the second time this week that Asif, a prominent member of the incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif cabinet, admitted to the hybrid model, criticised as not mixed but a “fixed government to serve subsidiary interests” by analysts.

The defence minister's candid words during an interview with Arab News aired on Friday evening are being considered as an admission that Sharifs' Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has the blessings of the powerful military establishment in Pakistan.

Asif described the civil-military hybrid system as co-ownership of the power structure as he said: “This is a hybrid model. It’s not an ideal democratic government. So, this hybrid arrangement, I think it is doing wonders. This system is a practical necessity until Pakistan is out of the woods as far as economic and governance problems are concerned.” He added if this sort of hybrid model was adopted way back in the 90s (when Nawaz Sharif was prime minister, twice), things would have been much, much better because the confrontation between military establishment and the political government would retard the progress of democracy.

The defence minister claimed that “the only realistic option” for the PML-N and the Sharifs is “to compromise with the military.” Earlier, a day after Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir met US President Donald Trump at the White House, Asif on Thursday said in a post on X described the meeting as “the most important turning point in the 78-year history of relations,” and added that the development is the success of the “current hybrid model of governance”, involving the elected government and the army.

Sharifs' arch rival and former prime minister Imran Khan has maintained since last year that the February 8 general elections witnessed the ‘Mother of All Rigging’ that deprived his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), from forming the government. Khan also called the PML-N and its ruling partner, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari as “mandate thieves.” After Asif's open admission, the critics claimed that it has further buried the PML-N's earlier slogan of “vote ko izzat do (give respect to the ballot),” setting a future course of politics for the Sharifs that they would continue their politics as subservient to the powerful military.

“This (Trump-Munir) meeting has lifted the thin, see-through veneer of ‘elected’. What the world has known for quite a while is now in the open... where is the centre of power in Pakistan and who is in control of real state powers? The political allies (military) in power have presented themselves as the ‘government’ now.

“Khawaja Asif and others now have to seek some legitimacy to praise the merits of the hybrid model, which actually doesn’t mean a mixed but a fixed government to serve subsidiary interests,” said senior analyst Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais.

He said the current setup is, in fact, the third “hybrid regime” since the ouster of Imran Khan in 2022.

“Today the difference is that while Gen Ziaul Haq and Gen Pervez Musharraf created political fronts by cannibalising major parties, this time around the two major parties -- PMLN and PPP -- have willingly served as political facade,” he said referring to the past two army generals who later became presidents.

Dr Rais said by handing victory to the PML-N and PPP in the previous elections, the military establishment has “reduced these parties to the status of an appendage in the hybrid order.” He said the political capital of the PML-N and PPP is buried alongside their anti-establishment narrative. “Now, the priority of the Sharifs and Zardaris as well as the military establishment is to neutralise the third force — Imran Khan's PTI --- which is perceived as a danger for all of them,” he said.

Senior journalist Matiullah Jan said on X, “What a fall from grace for a politician. This defence minister takes oath to defend the constitution which makes no mention of the so-called hybrid form of government.” “The fact is that this system is not even a hybrid system but a pure and simple dictatorship with political pygmies at the heels of affairs,” he added.

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