On Aug 6, 1990, Benazir Bhutto was removed from office less than two years after being elected as the prime minister of Pakistan, the first female in the Muslim world to have reached this office.

My most vivid memory of that fateful day - or was it a day after? - is that of an elected prime minister arguing with a group of soldiers over what she was allowed to take with her from her official residence. This happened at the Sindh House where she was staying. Noticing a group of journalists entering her besieged residence, she pointed to a pile of household goods and said: “These are my personal belongings but they want to seize them as well.”

This was a bitter reminder of democracy’s weaknesses in a country that had just come out of its worst-ever military reign, that of Gen Ziaul Haq.

Ms Bhutto was finally allowed to take her crockery when she left her erstwhile residence - but crockery alone.

The forces that ejected her made sure that she could not win the 1990 elections. To this end, they helped form an alliance of right-wing parties led by Mian Nawaz Sharif.

Those were the days when the Sharifs were still living in Zia’s shadow. Keeping democracy alive was not yet high on their priority list and thus they felt no apparent pain in working with the generals in playing midwife to the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI). They had received warnings from some quarters that the move would ultimately rebound on them as well; but the Sharifs were not yet willing to listen.

Those readers that are now used to seeing criticism of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in public may have noticed that I am not doing this. That is because I belong to a generation which still fears knocks on the door at midnight.

Gen Zia was once addressing a gathering at the International School of Islamabad. The principal, while welcoming Zia, complained that he had been trying to bring the general to the school for several years but was always told that the president was busy. Zia replied that those who told him he was busy had not been not lying: “There aren’t many in this country who can lie to the ISI,” he said.

On Oct 19 last year, the Supreme Court (SC) ruled that the 1990 elections had been rigged, concluding that retired Gen Mirza Aslam Baig and retired Lt-Gen Asad Durrani, along with the then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, provided financial assistance to IJI. The motive, as decreed by the SC, was to deliberately weaken the PPP’s mandate.

For those who saw how the IJI was formed, this is no small achievement. We remember how some politicians openly claimed their alliance with the establishment and boasted that their friends at Aabpara would not allow the PPP to return to power.

Back in the 1990s, some of us also attended an ISPR briefing where military officials openly warned the SC against hearing a similar case against Gen Baig. When journalists asked an officer if they could quote him, they were told: “Of course, you can.”

History did not repeat itself in 2013. Former prime minister Raja Pervez Ashraf, though a lesser politician than Ms Bhutto, did not have to argue with troops over his personal belongings. He vacated the office peacefully after the PPP-led government completed its term.

Thanks to five years of democracy, the establishment is not backing such an alliance in 2013 - at least not openly. And even if it wanted to, it couldn’t. A vibrant media and a free judiciary, despite their intrusiveness, have helped create an environment which is not conducive to such moves.