Is America getting to be a little like Pakistan?

By Swagato Ganguly

In Pakistan it's well known that the security forces, apart from staging occasional military coups, continually shape the political environment and often turn the screws on civilian parties/ leaders/ governments who don’t see eye to eye with them.

When Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party moved against Nawaz Sharif’s government talk of a military coup was rife; Imran’s main charge against Nawaz, apart from corruption as allegedly revealed in the Panama papers leaks (very few among Pakistan’s elite pay any income tax – after all, Uncle Sam can always be blackmailed into generous handouts whenever debt spirals and the economy is in trouble) is that the PM is, apparently, conspiring to isolate and defame the army.

This happens against the backdrop of civilian-military tensions flaring (the controversial question of Gen Raheel Sharif’s reappointment is coming up; Cyril Almeida’s ill-fated report in Dawn suggests the Nawaz Sharif government may have had the temerity to actually question the security establishment). By almost willing a military coup (see this report in Pakistan’s Express Tribune), Imran is positioning PTI as the King’s Party — or military’s favourite — for which it can expect reciprocal political favours.

The state of affairs in America is of course very different. But could FBI be skewing the course of democratic politics there too?

Its director James Comey publicised investigations into Hillary Clinton’s emails in a manner that caused Clinton’s popularity to tank, which broke with its usual pattern of not publicising cases that have to do with either of the presidential candidates so close to the election — see this report in New York Times.

For example, the FBI also probed secretive business dealings in Ukraine by Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort, but kept mum about it. The NYT report goes on to say: “Officials said it would take something extraordinary to change the conclusion that nobody should be charged. But the absence of information has allowed festering speculation that the emails must be significant.”

So there could be nothing in the emails, but the FBI director’s publicisation of them looks perfectly timed to deliver the election to Donald Trump at a time when he was trailing Clinton.

(DISCLAIMER: Views expressed above are the author's own)