The recent Gallup survey extolling Pakistan Army’s public approval is misleading and erroneous.
There are many reasons for such a conclusion. The foremost being another finding of the survey–that the most popular political leader was former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan is the bete noir of the army. The army wants to keep Khan firmly locked up behind bars at least till the elections are over. So the people who voted Khan as the most popular leader cannot, in the same breath, hail the army as the most popular institution. It is difficult to believe unless the survey was manipulated.
A large number of respondents at the same time also lamented the economic misery. At least 77 per cent of them expressed great dissatisfaction with the country’s current direction, while 47 per cent described the economic situation as “very bad”. How can the same set of respondents then approve the army as the most popular institution knowing fully well that the army itself was largely responsible for this collapse. It was part of the hybrid regime.
Another important reason is the timing of the survey. The survey was conducted between June 10 and June 30,2023 in all provinces of Pakistan. This was the time when the army was locking up people in hordes after the May 9 incident. The public dissolution and anger, and fear, was at its peak. So for people to hail the army as a popular institution is difficult to believe. And that too alongside making Imran Khan the most popular political leader.
This was also the time when the army itself was a divided house. The Lahore Corps Commander had invited the mob to enter his house, ransack the military property while refusing to order a crackdown. The commander was naturally a sympathiser of Imran Khan and had refused to obey the command of his superiors. He currently faces court martial for his act of insubordination and indiscipline. He was not the only officer to cock a snook at Rawalpindi. There were others, middle-ranking and from lower ranks, who refused to follow the army’s orders on May 9. The number of soldiers involved in insubordination could run into double digits.
At a time when the army itself was a hothouse of rumours and conspiracy theories, it is incredulous to believe that Gallup managed to get people to vote for the army. The survey reeks of management
if not outright manipulation.
There cannot be any doubt that the Gallup Survey published widely in newspapers and other media sources was certainly timed to project the army in a good light when it was battling a public scrutiny of its political engineering, its failure to thwart terrorist attacks and its desperate attempt to corner whatever business prospect a poor and impoverished country could offer in times of crisis.
The army has not only managed to browbeat the political leadership through arrests, charges and military trials but is also in the process of utilising vast public resources to augment its own profit and influence. Dissenters are being rounded up. Political enemies are languishing behind bars. Even as terrorists are carrying out successful guerilla war against the army, the army itself is more interested in punishing local communities in Balochistan and Sindh and the tribal areas.
The present survey reminded of the 2023 Gallup Survey and 2014 Pew Global Research findings which claimed that people believed the country was headed in the right direction in the Musharraf years. The Gallup Pakistan survey in August 2013 showed that 59% of Pakistanis have a positive view of President Musharraf which, later events proved to be completely erroneous. General Musharraf perhaps became one of the most hated Generals in the later years. Is this the fate that awaits General Asim Munir too?