LAHORE: Between April 2022 and 2025, Pakistan experienced the most sustained period of democratic backsliding in its recent constitutional history.

“What began as an administrative pressure against political opponents evolved into a systematic reconfiguration of the State itself,” says a report titled “From Crackdown to Crisis”, authored by Dr Yasmeen Rashid – an incarcerated PTI leader – and Shayan Bashir.

“Coercive policing, mass arrests, media suppression, judicial intimidation, engineered elections and targeted humanitarian violations collectively transformed Pakistan’s constitutional order,” said.

These developments, the report argues, culminated in the 26th and 27th Constitutional Amendments, which altered the balance of power between the judiciary and executive and embedded coercive governance within the constitutional structure.

The authors divide the crisis into three stages – Post April 2022 Political Breakdown, May 9 2023 and the Construction of a State of Exception, and The Engineered General Election – and contend that each phase built upon the institutional damage of the previous one.

The first stage followed the political transition of April 2022. According to the report, the State adopted a security-oriented rather than political or constitutional response to opposition. “The crackdown of 25 May 2022, marked by mass arrests, late-night raids, preventive detentions and obstruction of peaceful assembly, set the template for subsequent actions. This period also saw targeted killings and violent attacks that undermined long-standing norms of political restraint.”

The second stage began with the arrest of PTI Chairman Imran Khan inside the Islamabad High Court on 9 May 2023. The report says the State reframed political dissent as a national security threat, transferring civilians to military courts and subjecting women detainees to humiliation and denial of due process.

The third stage was institutionalised through the General Election of Feb 8 2024. The report argues that the election did not serve as a democratic reset but as the next phase of controlled governance.

The humanitarian cost of this period is illustrated most clearly through the prolonged detention and medical endangerment of Dr. Yasmeen Rashid.

Published in Dawn, December 12th, 2025