October 12 marks 26 years since Gen. Pervez Musharraf forced Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office and declared himself “chief executive.” He suspended the constitution, retained the ceremonial husk of parliament, and promised reform that never arrived. What he did deliver was a durable template: elections and cabinets on the surface, the generals’ veto underneath. The coup did not end; it professionalised.

In Musharraf’s narration of the takeover, there were corporate titles and technocrats placed as poster faces to at least provide a surface-level dress-up to the khaki in control. That approach entrenched a structure in which civilian actors perform within boundaries enforced by the military and its intelligence arms.

The Supreme Court’s 2012 Asghar Khan judgment documented how the s

See Full Page