I keep thinking about something Justice Athar Minallah said in Karachi the other day. He didn’t dress it up in legal jargon, didn’t hedge his words with “on the one hand, on the other hand.” He just called it what it is: Pakistan’s so-called “hybrid system” — that awkward dance between civilians and the “real powers” — is nothing more than dictatorship in disguise.
That stings, doesn’t it? And it should.
Because when a senior judge admits, openly, that the judiciary’s 77-year record is not a source of pride but of shame, it forces us to confront the ghosts we keep sweeping under the carpet. He mentioned the old Maulvi Tamizuddin case, when judges bent to executive will. He reminded us of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s controversial trial, and how Musharraf’s coup and emergency were wrapped in judicial blessings. Every time the country reached a fork in the road, the bench tilted toward power, not principle.
But here’s the thing: Justice Minallah also pointed out that not all judges bowed. Some resisted. And those few, often forgotten in our political storytelling, are proof that courage was possible. That matters because it reminds us the collapse of institutions wasn’t inevitable — it was a choice.
The pattern hasn’t changed much. Hybrid experiments have only weakened the very institutions they pretend to “balance.” Civilian leaders end up shouldering the blame when policies fail. The “actual powers” step back, pretending their hands are clean. And the judiciary, time and again, provides the legal stamp. Compare this with democracies where elected leaders are accountable before voters. That’s the missing piece here: accountability.
It’s not that we lack a road map. The Constitution spells it out, in black and white. Parliament makes the laws. The judiciary interprets them. The military defends the borders. Simple enough. Yet every few years, those boundaries blur. And the blurring costs us dearly.
Think of the present moment: militant insurgencies in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, a hostile India to the east, an unreliable regime in Kabul. These are serious, existential challenges. Can we really afford a military distracted by political management? When guns are turned inward, when courtrooms echo with the “doctrine of necessity,” who exactly is watching the frontiers?
The scars are everywhere. From direct military rule to hybrid tinkering, Pakistan has paid a price in broken institutions, weakened parliaments, and public distrust. Justice Minallah’s warning was clear: democracy cannot breathe in half-light. Either institutions respect their limits, or we stay stuck in the same cycle — forever balancing on someone else’s terms.
And maybe that’s the bluntest truth: the hybrid system isn’t a compromise. It’s a slow suffocation of democracy, dressed up to look respectable. We can call it partnership, power-sharing, “stability.” But as Justice Minallah said, at the end of the day, it’s just dictatorship with better marketing.
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