Federal cabinet gives nod to imposition of emergency in KP; summary sent to president

[maxpane]

PTI ally Fazlur Rehman, the ex number 1 enemy and head of PDM which toppled Imran Khan also said in certain districts the police at night vacate the police stations and hide in local population houses. If this is true where are 10,000s of agencies, army, FC, the police job is not to fight terrorism, its the job of the army, FC, special forces and agencies.

When police vacate stations how peace can be prevaild its a close call.

 

[Bilal]

They were in power fair and square. The question is how low will your illegitimate FM stoop for power?

Bhai chhoro. Abh le liya na sabh kuchh, abh masle hal karo bas. Abh koi bahana baazi nahi, koi aye bai shai nahi.

 

[ghazi52]

States of exception: what the Constitution, 3 court rulings and 50 years say about the KP emergency​

Every player in this emergency has been on the other side of it before. The courts remember, even if they don’t.

Asad Rahim Khan
October 12, 2026

‘Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,’ wrote the notorious German thinker Carl Schmitt in 1922. Or, put simply, whoever gets to decide when the rules stop applying is the one actually in charge.

Gifted with a big brain and sharp turn of phrase, Schmitt went on to become a noted critic of parliament, constitutionalism, and liberal democracy. For a time, the age was also his: in the ’20s back then, much like the ’20s now, such subjects had fallen out of fashion.

But as a much-quoted critique of Mr Schmitt went, ‘His preferred cure turned out to be infinitely worse than the disease.’

So too, the centre tells us, that the ministry of Sohail Afridi in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the disease, and emergency the cure.

As to what kind of disease, we can’t be sure. The centre claims militancy; terror bleeding back into the headlines. But if that is the main case to be made, everything that attaches to Sohail Afridi in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also attaches to Sarfraz Bugti in Balochistan, a province nearly half the country’s landmass.

The unity regime is unhappy with such comparisons; apples and bowling balls, they say: Bugti’s ministers are cooperating with the centre, whereas Afridi’s are Taliban sympathisers. That, too, is an odd distinction: as Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman pointed out, Nawaz League had opposed Musharraf’s terror wars not too long ago, and no one had sent home the maulana’s coalition for putting up similar opposition in the same province after 2002.

Then there’s the timing: militancy has been resurgent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for years. Yet the din of emergency only sounded when Afridi announced he would hit the streets over access to his jailed leader, Imran Khan. Bloody terror attacks, and there were several, were never the trigger point.

If there was an explanation, it came — intentionally or otherwise — from prime minister Shehbaz Sharif the day emergency was declared. Sharif cited the PTI’s Long March protests at length: ‘Islamabad ki charhai…ka napak mansooba,’ was how he described it to his cabinet, before thanking Maulana Fazl for trying to keep the peace between the centre and the PTI (the maulana has since blamed the centre for backpedalling on its commitment). ‘It’s now or never,’ concluded Sharif, ‘…History will remember us for such decisions, in this way or that way.’

But history is already heading in that way, not this one: displacing a duly elected provincial government with a two-thirds majority is certainly memorable, but not for reasons the prime minister may suspect.

After all, it’s a question of perspective: when Asif Zardari imposed governor’s rule in Punjab in February 2009, then-deposed chief minister Shehbaz Sharif had taken a much poorer view of the issue. The same president is now doing it on the same man’s advice in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: the unity regime has imposed both emergency as well as governor’s rule.

 

[ghazi52]

Breaking down emergency​

These two provisions of the Constitution — emergency under Article 232, and governor’s rule under Article 234 — have different purposes and different tests. Exceptions exist in the affairs of states, and they are a part of the law for a reason: Pervez Musharraf was sentenced to death not for the act of declaring emergency in 2007, but for expressly refusing to use the Constitution to do it.

That said, there are rules to follow: emergency requires the threat of war or external aggression, or an internal disturbance beyond Peshawar’s power to control. Governor’s rule, by contrast, is the answer to a narrower problem: when a provincial government can no longer function under the Constitution. Both have trade-offs: while the provincial assembly retains some of its lawmaking powers under emergency, those powers can be handed off to Islamabad under governor’s rule.

Yet whereas governor’s rule cannot be extended beyond six months, emergency — subject to parliamentary approval — does not contain any hard outer limit within the text. Crucially, emergency also lends the centre an umbrella to suspend fundamental rights under a third provision, Article 233.

For reasons obvious, the unity regime has decided to go for broke, and push both buttons 232 and 234. By mixing two very distinct provisions in the same soup, it can try and claim the best of both worlds: emergency that can go on and on, that can swallow up fundamental rights, and that can, for the present, shutter the assembly via the governor.

Of course, opposition protests, at least at the time of the proclamation, neither amount to external aggression nor to internal disturbance required for emergency. They also do not speak to the breakdown of provincial government required for governor’s rule.

 

[Be dazzled]

Bhai chhoro. Abh le liya na sabh kuchh, abh masle hal karo bas. Abh koi bahana baazi nahi, koi aye bai shai nahi.

Lol. Nail on the head.

 

[ghazi52]

This is quite apart from the fact that going for a combo deal is a strange step: Article 232 assumes a provincial government overwhelmed by events, and leaves its assembly standing. Article 234 says the government itself cannot function constitutionally. It is hard to imagine both being true (and, in any event, neither is).

Plus, the unity regime is diving over guardrails it once built itself: the Eighteenth Amendment requires a resolution of the province’s own assembly for an internal emergency. Failing that, each house of parliament must approve within 10 days. Zardari, who signed off on the original amendment once upon a time, has used the backdoor: at no point did the province consent.

Afridi’s ministry may have been displaced for now, but it cannot be ousted outright. That can only happen when he loses the legislature’s confidence: as a Supreme Court concurrence put it in Pir Sabir Shah v. Federation in 1994, ‘The president, therefore, cannot dismiss the chief minister and the provincial cabinet in exercise of his power under Article 234.’

Afridi thus returns the second the proclamation of governor’s rule is lifted, per Sabir Shah, along with his cabinet and assembly. As for ‘history remembering’, Sharif has his own party men to thank for securing such a verdict in 1994, that too against the Bhutto-Zardaris’ attempt at ouster.

A year after Sabir Shah, when the same PPP thought to remove chief minister Manzoor Wattoo in Punjab, it again ended in tears: Shehbaz Sharif, then leader of the opposition, even raised the alleged plot in the provincial assembly. The Lahore High Court ruled against the PPP’s power grab: to impose governor’s rule under Article 234, a ‘breakdown of constitutional machinery’ was a must. No such breakdown was in the offing then in Punjab, nor now in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

As for emergency, the test is even starker. Again, the ruling regime would know: in May 1998, the prime minister’s brother Nawaz Sharif had imposed emergency under Article 232 and suspended fundamental rights under Article 233, right after Pakistan and India’s nuclear tests.

But Nawaz’s emergency was challenged in the Supreme Court by former president Farooq Leghari and one Imran Khan, described (in a strange echo of network television’s ongoing ban) as ‘chairman of a political party Tehrik-e-Insaf’. While the Court ruled in favour of emergency, it did so explicitly on the basis of ‘imminent danger of external aggression’.

In 1998, that meant mushroom clouds. In 2026, it means Sohail Afridi’s caravan meandering down from Peshawar.

Not least, it felt the government’s claims of lawlessness in Sindh and sectarian killings in Punjab didn’t count as actionable internal disturbances, and that Islamabad had no good reason to suspend fundamental rights. The Court struck down the suspension.

Compared to the present, context is also important. Under Article 232, Chief Justice Ajmal Mian held in Leghari, ‘the existence of the nation itself is at stake’. In 1998, that meant mushroom clouds. In 2026, it means Sohail Afridi’s caravan meandering down from Peshawar.

The unity regime’s latest disaster is not only self-inflicted, it is also self-defeating. Back when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the National Awami Party’s ministry in Balochistan in 1973, it was for reasons that rhymed with today’s: terror, disloyalty, and the backing of hostile powers. Yet the only thing Bhutto managed to destroy was his opposition. After Quetta fell, the NAP’s coalition in the frontier (led, in yet another irony, by Maulana Fazl’s father Mufti Mahmood) resigned in protest. A four-year insurgency followed in one province, and mayhem and murder in the other.

It turns out that displacing an elected government in a restive land has been tried before. The only way through, in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, is through greater representation, not less.

When Pakistan did prevail against insurgency in the previous round, it was because of a hard-won consensus between state and society. That consensus is fracturing. Emergency will be its accelerant.

 

[ghazi52]

KP Governor Faisal Karim Kundi has said his advisory council will take its policies from Islamabad. Why not from the people of KP, who will be most affected by them? Perhaps unwittingly, the governor has sent the clearest possible signal that KP’s mandate is being held in abeyance. What the government in the centre and the governor’s new set-up in KP need to realise is that their words are not reaching only the leaders of a rival party, but also being heard by all those who helped elect those individuals to office.

If winning the confidence of the people of KP is not a priority at this stage, it ought to be. Governor’s rule is, by constitutional design, a temporary measure. The centre must say clearly how long it intends it to last, what it hopes to achieve in that time, and how the province’s elected mandate will be restored. Anything less will only confirm the impression that this was never solely about security.

 

[mythbuster]

This is quite apart from the fact that going for a combo deal is a strange step: Article 232 assumes a provincial government overwhelmed by events, and leaves its assembly standing. Article 234 says the government itself cannot function constitutionally. It is hard to imagine both being true (and, in any event, neither is).

Plus, the unity regime is diving over guardrails it once built itself: the Eighteenth Amendment requires a resolution of the province’s own assembly for an internal emergency. Failing that, each house of parliament must approve within 10 days. Zardari, who signed off on the original amendment once upon a time, has used the backdoor: at no point did the province consent.

Afridi’s ministry may have been displaced for now, but it cannot be ousted outright. That can only happen when he loses the legislature’s confidence: as a Supreme Court concurrence put it in Pir Sabir Shah v. Federation in 1994, ‘The president, therefore, cannot dismiss the chief minister and the provincial cabinet in exercise of his power under Article 234.’

Afridi thus returns the second the proclamation of governor’s rule is lifted, per Sabir Shah, along with his cabinet and assembly. As for ‘history remembering’, Sharif has his own party men to thank for securing such a verdict in 1994, that too against the Bhutto-Zardaris’ attempt at ouster.

A year after Sabir Shah, when the same PPP thought to remove chief minister Manzoor Wattoo in Punjab, it again ended in tears: Shehbaz Sharif, then leader of the opposition, even raised the alleged plot in the provincial assembly. The Lahore High Court ruled against the PPP’s power grab: to impose governor’s rule under Article 234, a ‘breakdown of constitutional machinery’ was a must. No such breakdown was in the offing then in Punjab, nor now in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

As for emergency, the test is even starker. Again, the ruling regime would know: in May 1998, the prime minister’s brother Nawaz Sharif had imposed emergency under Article 232 and suspended fundamental rights under Article 233, right after Pakistan and India’s nuclear tests.

But Nawaz’s emergency was challenged in the Supreme Court by former president Farooq Leghari and one Imran Khan, described (in a strange echo of network television’s ongoing ban) as ‘chairman of a political party Tehrik-e-Insaf’. While the Court ruled in favour of emergency, it did so explicitly on the basis of ‘imminent danger of external aggression’.


Not least, it felt the government’s claims of lawlessness in Sindh and sectarian killings in Punjab didn’t count as actionable internal disturbances, and that Islamabad had no good reason to suspend fundamental rights. The Court struck down the suspension.

Compared to the present, context is also important. Under Article 232, Chief Justice Ajmal Mian held in Leghari, ‘the existence of the nation itself is at stake’. In 1998, that meant mushroom clouds. In 2026, it means Sohail Afridi’s caravan meandering down from Peshawar.

The unity regime’s latest disaster is not only self-inflicted, it is also self-defeating. Back when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the National Awami Party’s ministry in Balochistan in 1973, it was for reasons that rhymed with today’s: terror, disloyalty, and the backing of hostile powers. Yet the only thing Bhutto managed to destroy was his opposition. After Quetta fell, the NAP’s coalition in the frontier (led, in yet another irony, by Maulana Fazl’s father Mufti Mahmood) resigned in protest. A four-year insurgency followed in one province, and mayhem and murder in the other.

It turns out that displacing an elected government in a restive land has been tried before. The only way through, in both Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, is through greater representation, not less.

When Pakistan did prevail against insurgency in the previous round, it was because of a hard-won consensus between state and society. That consensus is fracturing. Emergency will be its accelerant.

Innocent question ....do you even read everything you post .

 

[ghazi52]

Innocent question ....do you even read everything you post .

Yes ! I do. May be I have different understanding, due to my political inclination. I am from Hazara.

 

[Meengla]

I swear, if the Harami Altaf Hussein was given the megaphone for a year to stage public demonstrations every week for a year, going from Karachi to Kashmore about the 'Mohajir Cause' and blame everything on America, then he would be the Nelson Mendela, Che Guevera, Ho Chi Minn of the Mohajirs and win big in elections. Same applies to all ethnicities of Pakistan except the only time such a megaphone was given for so long was to Mr. Imran Khan. He capitalized on that to gain his popularity otherwise he was too cowardly and unpopular to call Early Elections before the No Confidence Motion. Easy to sell Anti-Americanism to Pakistanis anyway. Do note that Imran had been championing the Taliban/Terrorists causes for a quarter century: "We are killing our own for American Dollars" and the irony is that when he started to say those things in early 2000s, he was sitting on the lap of a military ruler GENERAL Mr. Musharraf just to get some morsels from Musharraf--a guy who was supposedly 'Killing our own for the American Dollars'.
Munafiq Taliban Khan's history is well documented. His expat supporters, with adequate help from the Indians and the Afghans in the blogspace, are trying to whitewash his past and present. But some of us remember.

 

[Forsvaret]

Bhai chhoro. Abh le liya na sabh kuchh, abh masle hal karo bas. Abh koi bahana baazi nahi, koi aye bai shai nahi.

How will military establishment ever "fix" a problem they themselves helped at creating way back in the 1980s with their "Afghan Jihad" Frankenstein monster?

 

[Bilal]

How will military establishment ever "fix" a problem they themselves helped at creating way back in the 1980s with their "Afghan Jihad" Frankenstein monster?

That’s what they claimed that if it weren’t for KP government, they would’ve solved everything. So like it’s said: Ghora hazir, maidan hazir. Abh koi bahana nahi chalay ga.

 

[Owaiz]

I sometimes wonder why does it even matter what MA Jinnah wanted? He, God bless his soul, is long gone. It matters little now as to what he wanted.

Do you think Amreeki in Trump's America care what their founding fathers wanted their country to be? Many of them were hideous racists and most today don't even know who their founding fathers were. Their democracy as it exists today, was nothing like what their founding fathers had envisioned with special interests and all sorts of lobbying riding roughshod over the interests of the people that their democracy is supposed to represent (and this is the world's foremost democracy). Closer to home, Gandhi ji's India is long gone!

Jinnah did not give us a code of life. He delivered on statehood. The state now has to evolve as time goes by and we have to decide how we, as a nation, want to live.

Actually, America is still governed by the Constitution that is substantively unchanged since the days of the founding fathers. In the last 200 years, the only major changes, arguably, have been the abolition of slavery and removing race and gender restrictions on voting rights. So, please do not compare the systems of governance in the US and Pakistan.