In Pakistan, a mightier military and a judiciary undone

Pakistan has a new political order. On 13 November, Pakistan’s Parliament signed the 27th constitutional amendment into law, creating the country’s first constitutionally fortified sovereign military and, at the same time, severely curtailing the judiciary, making it a mere ancillary to the military controlled-executive. On the one hand, the 27th Amendment was the logical and possibly inevitable next step after the 26th Amendment in October 2024 delivered an authoritarian hit to the judiciary. On the other hand, the new legislation has allowed the most significant restructuring of the government, signalled the complete capitulation of the civilian political establishment to the military, and made the army – and particularly its chief – the leading and effectively unassailable political player. 

The 27th Amendment has expanded the military’s authority and formalised what had previously been unofficial practice. It has transformed the role of the Chief of Army Staff into the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). It has abolished the post of the Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and established the Commander of the National Strategic Command, who will be an army officer appointed in consultation with the CDF. All these changes grant unprecedented constitutional power to the head of the army, Asim Munir, who was promoted to the rank of field marshall in May this year.  

The amendment allows the CDF to be removed not through a simple majority in Parliament but by a two-thirds majority – the same number of parliamentary votes required to change the constitution itself. An elected prime minister, by contrast, can be removed with a simple majority, that is, if 51 percent of the National Assembly members support a vote of no confidence. In a republic where civilian leaders remain precarious by design, the military chief has been granted a permanence that no other public office enjoys. 

Under the 27th Amendment, the executive and the legislature now exercise sweeping control over the judiciary in several critical ways. First, it creates a new Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), which will be the highest court in the country and will absorb virtually all constitutional cases that previously went to the Supreme Court, including public interest litigation and fundamental rights disputes. The first set judges of the FCC – who could very well set the path of the court and for subsequent judges – including its first chief justice, have been handpicked by the president on the advice of the prime minister. Later appointments to the court will be made by an executive-controlled Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP).