Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif's BIG confession on military role, says country working on...

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

'Not ideal democracy'
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.

Praises Munir-Trump meet
The 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.

'Mother of all rigging'
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 , 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.

Time to 'seek legitimacy'
"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.

(With inputs from news agency PTI).