Elite Bonapartist Rule and Manufactured Instability in South Asia
What the people of Pakistan need is an alternative democratic rupture from the existing order, one led by workers, peasants, students, women, oppressed nationalities, and the formal and informal working class, rather than by the entrenched elite.
The 26th and 27th amendments to Pakistan’s Constitution represent one of the most significant political restructurings in decades. Yet these amendments were not passed through public consent or democratic consensus. Instead, they were crafted from above by a civil-military bloc that has dominated Pakistan’s political order for most of its history. Their goal today remains the same: to consolidate a Bonapartist regime. This state structure, which often appears to many as a neutral arbiter, presents itself as impartial but consistently protects elite interests, safeguards foreign capital, and suppresses democratic forces from below.
These amendments grant unprecedented immunity to the president and, more importantly, to the military high command. Through constitutional protections, the elite have insulated themselves not only from accountability for past actions but also secured protection from any future legal or judicial challenges. Such immunity is not new, similar protections were once extended to President Asif Ali Zardari-but the current amendments expand these shields far more widely. They are a constitutional fortress around those who manage the state, economy, and security apparatus, preventing any citizen or court from effectively challenging their actions within the framework of this amended constitution.
One of the most significant structural changes introduced through these reforms is the establishment of a Constitutional Court, separate from the existing Supreme Court. Although presented as an administrative improvement to ease judicial workload and assist with constitutional interpretation, the political reality is that its purpose is to neutralize the Supreme Court, which occasionally obstructed the elite’s political and economic projects. The new court has been designed to be politically subordinate. Its appointment procedures give the executive-and indirectly, the military-greater influence than ever before. This marks a shift toward a controlled judiciary, one that will not interfere with privatization plans, resource extraction, foreign investment deals, or the political ambitions of the ruling bloc.
The global and domestic economic context makes clear why these amendments were introduced. Pakistan is undergoing a ruthless phase of privatization and state restructuring, shaped by international financial institutions, Western governments, Gulf investors, and Chinese capital. These institutions demand predictability, uncontested contractual guarantees, freedom from legal obstacles in administrative decisions, and a tightly managed political environment free from public unrest. The amendments fulfill precisely these conditions. They enable the elite to hand over public assets-land, minerals, ports, energy grids, and industrial zones, to foreign investors without facing public, parliamentary, or judicial scrutiny.
Through this constitutional engineering, Pakistan is being reorganized to serve the needs of contemporary global capitalism. The Bonapartist system functions as an administrative bridge between the local elite and international capital so that neither democratic pressure nor social movements can interrupt profit extraction. This structure does not create stability; it creates dependency, further tightening Pakistan’s subordination to the global financial order and the geopolitical ambitions of major powers.
While the elite benefit from power and foreign investment, the consequences fall upon the working class, the unemployed, the middle class, and oppressed nationalities. Privatization will lead to massive layoffs, cuts to social services, rising electricity and fuel prices, and erosion of labor rights. Middle-class professionals will face deterioration in the public sector and growing economic insecurity. Small businesses and local capitalists will be squeezed by multinational corporations strengthened by state backing. Meanwhile, resource-rich regions such as Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will become even less autonomous as the regime strengthens its constitutional powers to seize land, tighten border control, and monitor dissent. This elite centralization will not bring peace; it will fuel instability.
The entire region is already engulfed in violence and political turmoil. The recent blast at Islamabad’s district court, attacks in Waziristan, and the deadly explosion in New Delhi are blamed by each state on foreign intelligence agencies and rival neighbors. Pakistan blames India, India blames Pakistan, and Afghanistan blames both. But these events cannot be understood merely through accusations. They are the product of decades of militarization, proxy warfare, intelligence competition, insurgent interventions, and state-driven sectarian politics.
For years, Pakistan and India have maintained parallel security doctrines built on mutual hostility. Both have cultivated non-state actors as strategic tools and used militant proxies to shape influence in border regions. Afghanistan, meanwhile, has served as a battleground for numerous regional and global powers, each using different groups to pursue its own interests. In such an environment, violence is not accidental, it is systemic, deeply rooted in the region’s power structure.
The ruling elites of all three states exploit this instability for political gain. The outcomes include increased military budgets, greater centralization of authority, repression of political opposition, and the silencing of civil society. After each explosion, the elites expand their control. As tensions rise, they strengthen their narratives. As border clashes intensify, they demand obedience from the public. Through this continuous instability, the ruling class preserves its power, while ordinary people, workers, peasants, students, women, and refugees-bear the cost, and state rulers along with corporate partners accumulate wealth.
The constitutional amendments in Pakistan have effectively closed nearly all democratic avenues. Elections are tightly controlled, political parties are either co-opted or suppressed, labor unions are weakened, and the judiciary has been stripped of its unpredictable independence. As a result, the social tensions produced by unemployment, economic inequality, inflation, provincial grievances, and political repression have no democratic outlet. A system that refuses to hear the voice of the people inevitably intensifies its own internal conflict. In this process, it becomes essential to provide direction to large urban protests and rural uprisings.
Within this historical context, the call for a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly is not merely a demand for constitutional reform-it is a program for social transformation. What is needed now is an alternative democratic rupture from the existing order, one led by workers, peasants, students, women, oppressed nationalities, and the formal and informal working class, rather than by the entrenched elite. Such an assembly must be genuinely sovereign: free from military interference, independent of international financial institutions, and based on genuine popular participation.
Only such a people’s assembly can abolish elite immunity, bring military capital under democratic control, restore public ownership of strategic sectors, ensure fair distribution of resources among oppressed nationalities, and build an economic system that serves the majority rather than a tiny oligarchy. Against imperial domination, Bonapartist authoritarianism, and the regional war-making structure, this assembly represents the political horizon through which the working class can reclaim its future.
