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For Navalny! Lets change Russia, starting with Moscow! reads this sticker. Pro-Navalny rally in Moscow, during the opposition leaders campaign for Moscow Mayor in 2013. Photo CC BY-NC 2.0: Vladmir Varfolomeev / Flickr. Some rights reserved.Liberal eschatologists have long been convinced the end times belong to them. Its hard to romanticise those who fight for the status quo after all, history is moving forward. What could possibly be positive about putting the brakes on progress?

Whatever their politics, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and anyone else worth a Hollywood biopic have been firmly ensconced in an idealised discourse. When figures rise up to reinforce the messianic narrative of hope and transformation, a certain class is primed to raise that strangers banner, however distant the land (or cause) is from their own. Cue Alexey Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption campaigner and presidential hopeful hoping to take on Vladimir Putin for the throne. Just mentioning Navalnys name sets off accusations and recriminations. Woe to the naive westerner looking to pour their own ideas into Navalnys distinctively conservative casting, the critics say.

The critics may have a point. For the screenwriter already writing the first draft of Navalnys triumph over tyranny, one key point is in order: a democratically restored Russia without Vladimir Putin (or Navalny, for that matter) will likely remain a conservative country. Take the work of Jonathan Haidt, who outlined the social-psychological roots of mans moral intuitions in The Righteous Mind.

Maybe, in the post-truth era, the progressives enemy is not on the other side of the political divide, but the institutional oneWhile not a complete determinist, Haidt argues that our political leanings stem from our genetics, shaped in a millennia-long waltz with group adaptation. He believes that human beings are equipped to exist in dominance hierarchies, though not in the alpha male might makes right model. We are social creatures who cooperate to survive. Rights forgone for the sake of the hierarchy also imply responsibilities for those who rise to the top, lest they be overthrown from within, or are crushed by more cohesive groups from without.

According to Haidt, human civilization is based on six moral foundations: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Sanctity and Authority. Adherence to this moral matrix can explain our spectacular rise to planetary dominance. It might also illuminate the creeping shadow of revanchist conservatism worldwide.

Why? Because it appears that liberals, especially those in the west, have forsaken loyalty, sanctity and authority in their political messaging. For those with high levels of threat sensitivity but little predisposition to novelty, diversity and variety, progressives appear to be razing the very foundations that make broad social cohesion possible.

Haidts theories, of course, arent some perfect perfect tool for decrypting human cognition, but a mlange of social scientific theory, western philosophy and evolutionary psychology. Critics call him a conservative masquerading as a liberal, cagily trying to turn social norms into empirical truth.

With those caveats in mind, Russia might prove the perfect place to put Haidts theories to the test. A power-obsessed nation where the state narrative sacralises the military fetes of its forefathers, idolises the iron fist and mythologises itself as the Third Rome certainly demonstrates the role of loyalty, authority and sanctity in politics.

Any new leader will have to reclaim the Great Patriotic War and the arch of Russian history, girded by the Orthodox Church, conceived on the Crimean peninsula, as their ownPerhaps one need look no further than the punk rock group Pussy Riot, who called themselves the children of Dionysus, sailing in a barrel and not recognising any authority, to bring that point home. Pussy Riots punk rock prayer, staged in Russias main Orthodox cathedral in 2012, gambled on stomping on sanctity, loyalty and authority for the sake of care, liberty and fairness. According to the Levada Center, It managed to attract the sympathy of six percent of Russians one year after the women were locked up in a quasi-ecclesiastical show trial. The Russian authorities, for all of their love of graft and general incompetence, cannot be accused of not knowing their own people.

That isnt to say that Russian citizens are mere supplicants at the altar of power. Appeals to care and fairness also have weight, as seen through the underreported truckers protests in Russia or growing unrest over the enormous demolition and resettlement scheme slated for Moscow. But for anyone seeking democratic reform, whereby care, liberty and fairness are respected (if not through equal rights for minorities, then at least through less corruption and the rule of law), one thing is abundantly clear: other moral foundations will have to play a critical role in propping up ones political platform.

Any new leader will have to reclaim the Great Patriotic War and the arch of Russian history, girded by the Orthodox Church, conceived on the Crimean peninsula, as their own. They cannot merely seek to turn Russia into another European-style democracy. Rather, they will have to make Russia great again, projecting authority, engendering loyalty and safeguarding the sacred.

Teachers at a May Day demonstration in St Petersburg. Photo (c) Teacher Inter-regional trade union of education workers. All rights reserved.Only then can the authorities properly be targeted for neglecting fairness through the systematic elimination of democratic institutions and civil society; for letting the countrys healthcare, social services and infrastructure be degraded for the sake of their laundered money and European villas.

This brings us back to Alexey Navalny, who, it seems, has his finger on the pulse of the nation, setting off alarms among his peers along the way.

Prominent journalist Oleg Kashin has warned on the pages of the New York Times that Navalny, with an authoritarian leadership style and past participation in nationalist causes, may actually be another iteration of Putin rather than his foil. Leftist Ilya Budraitskis has argued that Navalnys vertically organised protest movement is like a political machine coldly indifferent to input from the little guy. Alexey Sakhnin and Per Leander went as far as to brand Navalny the Russian version of Donald Trump. Bloombergs Leonid Bershidsky has likewise referred to his political platform as Trump-like.

So what does Navalny actually believe? A bizarre recent debate with Igor Girkin a key figure in Russias aggression against Ukraine and a dyed in the wool monarchist left that question mostly unanswered. Navalny skirted the hard questions during the debate, all the while attempting to recast Russian nationalism as less of a 19th century imperial redux syndrome and more of a corruption is undermining our ability to be great crusade. Who cares if we have Donetsk if hospitals are crumbling in Saratov, Navalny asks. This, however, does little to clarify whether Navany believes Donetsk should remain under Russian-backed rule if the price is right.

Alexey Navalny and Igor Girkin hold a debate online. Source: Youtube. Navalny seems content to leave the big questions within the purview of European technocrats and not moral necessity, hoping, vaguely, that the Minsk Agreement will sort the Ukraine situation out. He is equally vague on Crimea. The Syrian intervention is portrayed by Navalny as a waste of financial, and not moral capital. Navalny, in short, takes a utilitarian approach that is right in Haidts wheelhouse.

To be fair, Navalny is clearly stuck between scylla and charybdis. What is demanded of Navalny from his nebulous western supporters is likely antithetical to what would put him in power back home, if he is actually allowed to run.

Maybe the true slant of Navalnys political leanings are not the most important matter at hand anyways. Maybe, in the post-truth era, the progressives enemy is not on the other side of the political divide, but the institutional one. It may be less important if Navalny believes in gay adoption and more important if hed respect a courts ruling to that effect; whether such a court would be allowed to exist in the first place under his government.

Haidt, after all, argues that good people are divided by politics, not their belief in institutions. And it appears that robust institutions, in Russia and elsewhere, are the key to a brighter future. A successful Navalny presidency would reassert the independence of the judicial and legislative branches, reduce wealth inequality, fix crumbling infrastructure in the regions, invest in education and pensions, significantly reduce graft, relinquish state control of the fourth estate, respect Russias neighbors within a 21st (rather than 19th) century framework, significantly develop the role of civil society, focus on leading through soft power and seek to bolster the sclerotic post-war global order rather than disrupt it.

Political voices relegated to the wilderness would be allowed back in from the cold, onto the airwaves, and relatively free from state-sponsored harassment. More importantly, the exact date on which he would step down would be known and constitutionally determined.

But Navalnys rule could also result in the type of curb on immigration that Trump could only dream of, with issues related to LBGTQ rights being left to die on a regional level. The gay propaganda law might go, but will there be gay marriage? Dont count on it yet. A secular state will be enshrined, but the Orthodox Church, cleaved from the states grip but cosseted by officials all the same, might end up taking a larger role in society than ever before, granted people actually start believing in society again.

In reality, however, Putin is likely primed to lay the foundations for his third decade in power next year. Navalny will likely become a footnote in history a Decembrist rather than a Bolshevik to inform the next generation of rebels to come.

But the issue of Russias future, political and otherwise, goes far beyond Navalny. Activists looking to prioritise gender equality, minority rights and protection of the most vulnerable members of society in Russia today will probably not succeed tomorrow. For those issues to have their day in court, an institutionally sound Russia will first have to be built on foundations not reflecting what Russia should be, but rather, what it is.

Link:
Alexey Navalny and the moral pillars of democracy - Open Democracy

A Hong Kong political activist has claimed he was abducted in the city on Thursday and then blindfolded, beaten and tortured, with staples punched into his legs, before being released on a beach by people he said were mainland agents.

Howard Lam Tsz-kin, a member of the Democratic Party, the largest opposition party in Hong Kongs legislature, said he believed the reason for the kidnapping was that he had received a signed postcard from Barcelona football star Lionel Messi last month which he intended to pass on to Liu Xia, the widow of late Chinese dissident and Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Lam said he had received a phone call from a mainland friend on Monday, warning him not to try to give Liu the postcard.

He told me in Putonghua ... that Id pay if I ignored the warning, Lam said.

The activist said that on Thursday, after he had bought a football jersey in Yau Ma Tei at about 4pm, two strangers spoke to him in Putonghua and pushed him into a van.

I was punched in the vehicle ... and I later woke up when someone hit me with a hard object, he said.

At that time, I was only wearing my underwear, I was blindfolded and my limbs were tied up.

He said he believed there were four to five people in the room when he was tortured. They at no point showed him any documents or identified themselves.

A man asked if I knew Liu Xia, and why I was doing all these things ... He said I didnt know how to love the country, Lam said.

The man also said: Are you a Christian? Do you know how to love the country and the religion? ... Ill give you some crosses, he said, and then he stapled my legs.

Lam showed the media about 20 marks from staples on his legs on Friday.

I passed out again, and when I woke up I found myself dumped on a beach and it was about 1am ... I later discovered I was in Sai Kung.

Asked if he would seek police protection after the incident, Lam said he did not trust the Hong Kong police and authorities on the matter. He said he had been too tired to report it to police after returning home early on Friday morning. After receiving advice from the Democratic Partys former chairmen Martin Lee Chu-ming and Albert Ho Chun-yan, Lam decided he would host a press conference on Friday and go to hospital before making a police report.

Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting said the incident was a serious violation of Hong Kongs mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and the one country, two systems principle, which guarantees the city a high degree of autonomy under Chinese Communist Party rule.

He said colleagues would take the activist to Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam before reporting the incident to the local police on Friday.

A source with the Hong Kong police said officers would interview the victim and check security camera footage to gather evidence on the case.

Detectives from the Kowloon West regional crime unit would investigate, the source said.

Liu Xia, a 56-year-old poet, painter and photographer, was married to Chinas most famous pro-democracy dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died in police custody on July 13. She had been under house arrest since 2010 but her whereabouts are currently unknown.

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Hong Kong pro-democracy activist claims he was abducted, blindfolded and beaten by mainland China agents - South China Morning Post

Voters might be quite rational in refusing to give the green light to those who wield power and benefit from the status quo.

This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative between The Conversation and the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.

This is the fourth in a series, After Populism, about the challenges populism poses for democracy. It comes from a talk at the Populism: Whats Next for Democracy? symposium hosted by the Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra in collaboration with Sydney Democracy Network.

The flipside of the populism coin is voter ambivalence about democracy as we know it.

Though much of the reporting of last years US presidential race focused on the angry American voter, it has been observed that perhaps the most striking feature of the campaign that led to the election of Donald Trump was not so much that people were angry, as ambivalent.

In another surprising 2016 election, in the Philippines, observers also reflected that a shared ambivalence about democratic government must in large part have led many middle-class voters to support the firebrand Rodrigo Duterte.

And in France, people explained the record low turnout in Junes parliamentary elections by pointing to the ambivalent base. Despite Emmanuel Macrons election, the new president had yet to convince many French voters that his ideas and legislative program will make their lives better.

These examples suggest political ambivalence is everywhere on the rise, and that these are anxious times politically.

If the appeal of leaders like Trump and Duterte is anything to go on, despite or perhaps because of their peddling of a violent and exclusionary rhetoric, widespread ambivalence among citizens of democracies has potentially dangerous consequences.

We often equate ambivalence with indecision or indifference. But its a more complex and more spirited idea than that. Ambivalence reflects our capacity to say both yes and no about a person or an object at the same time.

Eugen Bleuler, the Swiss psychiatrist who coined the term in 1910, wrote:

In the dreams of healthy persons, affective as well as intellectual ambivalence is a common phenomenon.

Freud soon picked up the term to describe our capacity to love and hate a person all at once.

We neednt be Freudians to see that ambivalence reflects our common inner experience. While we cannot physically be in two places at once, in our minds it is not only possible but likely that dualities and conflicting ideas or beliefs co-exist at the same time. Think of Hamlets soliloquy:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them

The point is that, rather than reflecting some psychological deficiency or cognitive dissonance, ambivalence is an active and wilful position to take.

Ambivalence is even rational, in that it requires an awareness of mutually exclusive choices and a refusal to choose; just as wanting a bit of both is also rational.

When it comes to politics, we often hold conflicting, even mutually exclusive visions, of the sort of society we want.

In the Philippines, the middle-class voters I interviewed in 2015 wanted the civil liberties that democracy provides. At the same time, they were concerned that too much freedom was causing social and political chaos.

The two ideas, though contradictory, co-existed in peoples minds. This type of ambivalence at least partly explains why urban middle-class voters came out in numbers to elect someone like Duterte.

As ambivalence is often linked to the victories of populists, there is a general sense that our ambivalence is destabilising, dangerous and needs to be purged. Ambivalent citizens, the reasoning goes, place a heavy burden on their countrys democracy, as by questioning the status quo of the modern democratic state they undermine its very legitimacy.

The failure to reach clarity implies a failed agency on the part of the ambivalent citizen; it is they who carry the burden of resolving their own feelings and returning to a place of undivided certainty.

Commentary after the US election spoke of not letting the ambivalent Trump-voting middle class (who should have known better) off the hook.

Yet, as Zygmunt Bauman noted, the more we try to eradicate ambivalence by calling it ignorance and mere opinion, the more the opposite is likely to occur.

Furthermore, people who have been reduced to decision-takers will be more likely to see radical, revolutionary, even destructive change as the only way to resolve their ambivalence.

Democracy and ambivalence, rather than being antithetical, may be strange bedfellows. At the heart of the democratic idea is a notion of the people as both the source and guardians of power.

Consider the way Ernesto Laclau sees the political as always in conflict, inherent in conflicting identities struggling for dominance.

While the collective identity of the people claims to accommodate difference, this is impossible without the constitutive exclusion of the other.

If this is the case, democracy should stimulate our scepticism. Who is being excluded in the name of the people? And who has gained the power to constitute their particular identity as a unified whole?

Ideally, representative democracy seeks not only to recognise but to institutionalise this scepticism, and to manage our disappointment with democracy. It is our ability to withdraw our support and give it elsewhere that means our contested visions of society dont lead to its destruction.

The trouble is that the 21st-century democratic state has little tolerance of our scepticism about power. Citizens are pressured to turn their trust over to a bureau-technocratic order led by experts in order to deal with complex, contemporary problems. The role of voters is transformed into that of passive bystanders, prone to chaos and irrationality, and not to be trusted.

Matters are made worse by extreme concentration of wealth and income inequality. Thomas Piketty correctly warned that extreme inequality would threaten the democratic order.

Despite observing (and experiencing) the undermining of basic social protections and equity principles, people are expected to stay in their place. It is as if ordinary citizens are not trusted to make their own judgements, unless those judgements endorse the path of little or no change.

Their ambivalence, which may be a purposive response to their evaluation of how democracy is actually working, is deemed toxic and socially useless.

No doubt such widespread ambivalence, as well as this denial of the valid expression of unmet aspirations, has provided fertile ground for populist politicians.

The likes of Trump and Duterte appeal to peoples desire not to be fixed into pre-determined standards of how to think and behave. And in claiming to fill a gap as true representatives of the people, they enable what often turns out to be a radical expression of voter ambivalence.

Political ambivalence is more than a flawed tension of opposites. Neither is it a temporary deviance. It is deeply rooted, and likely here to stay.

The more we dismiss and disparage it, rebuking voters who should know better, the more we risk its manifestation in destructive ways.

A more constructive first step for managing ambivalence as a society would be to recognise it even embrace it as a chance to reflect critically on the status quo.

Kenneth Weisbrode likened ambivalence to a yellow traffic light, the one that exasperates us at the time, but in fact helps us avoid fatal collisions:

a yellow light that tells us to pause before going forward pell-mell with green, or paralysing ourselves with red.

If we heed his advice, the presence of widespread ambivalence should prompt us to pause and look around.

This is more radical than it may sound. Slowing down, and contemplating how our democracy is working for us as a community, potentially limits the power of those who benefit from the status quo.

It could even be seen as one of democracys internal safety mechanisms, since being sceptical about the exercise of power and keeping in check those who benefit from it, is what keeps democracy alive.

Bauman wrote:

The world is ambivalent, though its colonisers and rulers do not like it to be such and by hook and by crook try to pass it off for one that is not.

Ambivalence may be the most rational response to the fact that, in 2017, the notion of democracy as a politics of self-government and collectively made choices has, in many respects, become a lullaby, mere rhetoric that serves the interests of those who benefit from the persistence of a shared yet elusive ideal.

If not the populist figures, who or what else in our democracies today is claiming to represent the people? A living democracy hinges upon this type of circumspection. It could even usher in a new era of democracy.

Original post:
We frown on voters' ambivalence about democracy, but they might just save it - The Conversation AU

Toronto Sun

Democracy under siege in Maduro's Venezuela Toronto Sun The headlines around the world said it all in describing the bogus July 30 election in Venezuela. Venezuela heading for dictatorship after 'sham' election, wrote the Guardian, quoting Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Venezuela ... Venezuela Rejects New US Sanctions Against its DemocracyPrensa Latina Venezuela Says US Sanctions Criminalize DemocracyteleSUR English all 138 news articles »

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Democracy under siege in Maduro's Venezuela - Toronto Sun

Pakistan has a new prime minister at least for now. Last Tuesday, Pakistans parliament held a special election to replace Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), who was ousted in a judicial coup last week. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, a staunch Sharif loyalist, is expected to keep the prime ministerial palace warm while the PML-N arranges to secure a seat in the parliament for Nawaz Sharifs brother, Shehbaz Sharif, in a coming by-election and as a prelude to hoisting him into the prime ministers seat.

It is not surprising that Nawaz Sharif has been ousted. What is surprising is that he managed to hold on for so long. The army had its sights on Sharif before he was even sworn in after winning an unpredicted landslide victory in the 2013 election. It had already taken him out of office twice before. Shehbaz Sharif is much more palatable to the army. Unlike his brother, he has eschewed confrontation and has even maintained cordial ties with the generals.

Such are the prerequisites to holding power in Pakistan. Whereas many countries have an army, the Pakistani army has a country. For Pakistans powerful military, the notion of actual democracy is contemptible. The army long ago arrogated the right to step in whenever it felt wanted and repeatedly reminds Pakistanis that civilian leaders are the bane of the nation while the army is the only savior. Whether directly or indirectly, the army has ruled the country since the first Pakistani army chief Ayub Khan staged a coup in October 1958. It has done a far better job hanging on to power than it ever has at winning a war.

Since 2008, when democracy was formally restored after Gen. Pervez Musharrafs nine-year dictatorship ended, Pakistans predatory praetorians have faced a looming problem: Democracy, however flawed, was taking root right under their well-groomed moustaches. Although the general election that brought Sharif to office wasnot pristine, it was the first time that a democratically elected administration had completed its term (although not without considerable havoc ginned up by the army) and handed power over to another democratically elected administration.

Between 1988, when democracy was restored after the demise of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in a plane crash, and 1999, the army connived to depose the governments of Benazir Bhutto in 1990 and in 1996 and that of Nawaz Sharif in 1993 and ousted Sharif again! in a bloodless coup in 1999. But given that democracy had managed to weather the storms since 2008, Pakistan watchers were cautiously hopeful that, as democracy became more routine, the military would have an increasingly difficult time undermining governments and staging outright coups. The problem is the generals recognized the same and contrived to prevent democracy from sinking its roots too deeply.

In addition to this general concern about maintaining its primacy in national politics, the military had special cause for concern about Sharif. The military has a long memory and so did not forget that Sharif had previously exercised his constitutional prerogative to replace the army chief, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, in 1998 with Musharraf. (This was surely not Sharifs best idea, as history demonstrated.) Nor would it forget that Sharif tried but failed to oust Musharraf in turn after he orchestrated the 1999 Kargil War with India, which ended in ignominy for Pakistan.

Worse yet, Sharif did so while Musharraf was in Sri Lanka and refused to let his plane land in Pakistan with virtually no fuel and nowhere else to land. The military concluded that this was an attempt on Musharrafs life and put the coup into motion. Musharraf, apparently in an act of grace, did not hang Sharif; rather, he exiled him to Saudi Arabia.

Sharif had a long memory, too. When democracy returned, Sharif only demanded that Musharraf be tried only for the 2007 suspension of the constitution and not for the 1999 coup itself. But the very thought of one of their own being tried for a treasonable offense sent the men on horseback into a vertiginous panic. This would not simply be a trial of Musharraf but of the entire institution and its presumptions about its proper role in the governance of the country. The trial never actually happened thanks to unrelenting army pressure and Musharraf still lives in comfortable exile in Dubai and London, where he has mysteriously been able to afford luxurious flats.

Given his relative strength, Sharif sought to assert a whit of civilian control over the countrys bloated military. He took over personal oversight of thedefense and foreign affairs portfolios, which had previously been left to the military. He was vocal about pursuing better ties with India and sought to expand economic and other ties with the armys eastern nemesis. Sharif engaged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at every opportunity.

And, in an act that the military saw as verging on high treason, Sharif had the temerity to argue for jettisoning the age-old strategy of manipulating Afghanistan to obtain strategic depth against India. Sharif also committed to negotiate with the Pakistani Taliban, which has savaged the country for more than a decade. The army, for its own reasons, wanted to launch a selectiveoperationagainst the group in Pakistans North Waziristan area, which it did in June 2014. Operation Zarb-e-Azb, which ended in April 2016, was so successful that the army had to launch yet another operation in early 2017 called Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad.

While the army had been gunning for Sharif since he returned to power in 2013, it was constrained in its options. Given that Sharifs won an outright parliamentary majority, the military could not simply rely upon coalitional shenanigans to bring his government down. Worse yet, no matter what domestic hijinks the army cooked up by making good use of a lothario cricketer-turned-politician named Imran Khan and a Pakistani-Canadian activist cleric named Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, Pakistanis were not clamoring for the army to come in and rescue them.

The constitutional provision that the Pakistani army had previously relied on to unseat governments was also no longer available to it. This amendment, known as 58(2)(b), was introduced in 1985 and turned Pakistans parliamentary democratic system, which featured a strong prime minister and a titular president, on its head. The amendment granted the president (then Zia) sweeping powers to dissolve the national and provincial assemblies, which he did.But in 2010 President Asif Ali Zardari signed the18th Amendment, returning Pakistan to a more traditional parliamentary democracy.

Without its trusty cudgel, the army needed to develop new ways of bringing democracy to heel, which is why, soon after Musharrafs departure, the military began cultivating Pakistans Supreme Court. The judicial farce that resulted in Sharifs most recent ouster demonstrates that the courts remain tools for the generals to clip democracys wings.

In April 2016, the massive tranche of leaked documents known as the Panama Papers identified that Sharifs family had offshore companies. After considerable rabble-rousing by Imran Khan, whose own accumulation of wealth is deeply suspect, and who threatened to paralyze Islamabad with a lockdown, the Supreme Court agreed to set up a judicial commission to probe allegations of corruption against Sharif. (Khans ability to mobilize crowds most likely involves resources provided by Pakistans intelligence agency, the ISI, which is also strongly suspected of funding his near spontaneous political ascent in 2010.)

But the original charges against Sharif were never proved. Instead, to disqualify Sharif from office, the court relied upon a peculiar article in Pakistans constitution known as Article 62, which relies upon an undefined concept of moral repute. It also utilized Section 99(f) of the Representation of the People Act of 1976, which permits a person to be disqualified if he or she is not sagacious, righteous and non-profligate and honest and righteous. In 2014, a Supreme Court judge observed that the constitution does not define these terms.

While some quarters are hailing this outcome as the triumph of the courts over venal politicians, others understand this for what it is: an arbitrary and selective application of an absurd set of undefined criteria to dislodge a long-festering splinter in the armys middle finger. While there is little doubt that Sharif is actually corrupt, there is also little doubt that any politician in Pakistan is free of corruption. This has set a dangerous precedent to arbitrarily topple elected governments.

Since Shehbaz Sharif is a provincial player with less international experience, the generals believe that hes more pliable on their core issues of relations with India, the United States, China, and Afghanistan. But the military will still work to eviscerate any lingering positive feelings for Nawaz. Over the long term, expect the army to sow fissures in the party to weaken the Sharifs hold over their political fiefdom.

While the courts are being celebrated in Pakistan for liberating the country from a predatory politician, would the gallant justices ever move against the army with any modicum of verve? Doubtful. No Pakistani court has ever had the mettle to hold a single general to account for treason, much less more petty nuisances such as industrial-strength corruption. When Pakistans Supreme Court can take on the real menace to Pakistani democracy the generals we will have something to celebrate. Until then, the army has stumbled upon yet another tool to trim the branches of democracy in Pakistan.

Photo Credit: ARIF ALI/AFP/Getty Images

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The Only Enemy Pakistan's Army Can Beat Is Its Own Democracy - Foreign Policy (blog)