With the results of last week’s elections in Pakistan, voters there have delivered their politicians a unique moment in history — one which could present the polity an opportunity to change the endless cycles of the past. These cycles have always brought those favoured by the military establishment to power in the country, followed by a period of tensions and fracture between the military and the political rulers, the dismissal of that government, the appointment of another, and then another election. Rinse, repeat.
The consistency with which each of the periods of political governments in Pakistan has met its end has produced three constants: first, none of the country’s 30 Prime Ministers thus far has completed a full term in office. Second, every current major political party, i.e., Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), has at some point been the military’s “favourite” in an election. And third, each of those parties has by turn fallen out of favour as well, and its leaders have found themselves imprisoned or ‘exiled’ from the country.
A rotation of the same leaders
While previous decades after 1947 saw a few political governments interspersed between military rule and martial law, since 2008, the military has played its role without actually taking over the reins of government. In this elaborate game of master-puppetry, military chiefs have had the support of all government arms and the judiciary, that have dismissed a number of Prime Ministers in a series of conveniently timed Supreme Court judgments. In 2012, PPP Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was dismissed for contempt of court for refusing to reopen cases against then-President Asif Ali Zardari, and in 2017, PML-N Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was dismissed over the Panama Papers leak about a London apartment. Given the limited number of players in Pakistan’s polity, however, the same leaders are re-introduced into the political spin cycle by the judiciary as well. So, Mr. Sharif was able to return to Pakistan last year just in time for elections because the cases against him were overturned, and Mr. Zardari’s PPP is essaying another term for him as President if it enters into a coalition deal for the next government.
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Meanwhile, Imran Khan was dismissed after a no-confidence vote in Parliament, which was ordered by the Supreme Court (it had reversed his dissolution of the house and his call for general elections in April 2022). Mr. Khan has since been convicted on charges that range from corruption to insurrection, and is also serving a seven-year prison term along with his wife Bushra Bibi for an “illegal marriage” (deemed “un-Islamic” by the courts). Apart from Mr. Khan’s incarceration, the Pakistani courts have passed a slew of verdicts against the PTI, allowing cases against many PTI party members — some of them have quit politics rather than face repeated arrests. The country’s media regulator had already banned the PTI leader’s speeches from being aired on television. The Supreme Court also endorsed the Election Commission’s decision to derecognise the PTI, and take away the party symbol (cricket bat), forcing the party to field all its candidates as Independents.
With the Independents surging ahead in most seats despite all this, the counting of votes, which is normally an exercise that takes some hours in Pakistan, slowed down to a crawl. Days later, the Election Commission showed a three-way result, reversing many of the early leads, which led to the current tally where none of the parties has enough to form a majority on their own; while the PTI Independents have the biggest haul of seats, the single largest party at present is the PML.
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Predictably, the PML and PPP have decided to form a government together. The Election Commission will complete the formal notification of these results over the next few days, after which the Independents will have 72 hours to pledge allegiance to one or another political party, or risk losing out on a further share of proportional seats for women and minorities (allotted on a pro-rata basis to parties). One can be sure that each of the elected 93 members is already receiving threats and incentives to break away from the PTI in order to produce the establishment’s desired outcome, and perpetuate the rinse, repeat laundry cycle of previous Pakistani elections. However, Pakistan’s polity still has a chance to take the unique moment that Pakistan’s voters have provided them to change the course of that history, and to break the cycle of the past.
On the Pakistan voter
To begin with, the importance of the Pakistani voter’s actions cannot be downplayed, especially those who came to vote despite the cynicism over a pre-selected outcome. This is the voter who knew from past elections that their votes may not be counted and their mandate not respected, but still chose to vote differently from what was expected. If Mr. Khan wants to respect that vote and thwart the establishment, then the answer is not to go it alone and sit in the opposition, but, instead, to find ways to be in the government. For the PML-N and PPP, to form a government that cuts out the PTI would be a travesty of the vote as well, as this was a voter who clearly rejected the previous PML-PPP government, also led by Shahbaz Sharif (2022-2024), before the elections.
Second, each of the three major parties and leaders have suffered in more or less the same way as the others. Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari have an even longer history of being jailed along with their family members, not to mention Benazir Bhutto’s struggles after her father was hanged. While none of them is blameless for the crimes they have been charged with thereafter, it is clear that those charges can vanish at the click of the establishment’s fingers, when one of the politicians is deemed serviceable or becomes the “laadla” (chosen son). Before he was disqualified for corruption in 2017, Nawaz Sharif had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2000 on charges of hijacking and terrorism, and yet, returned as Prime Minister in 2013. It would be more pragmatic then, if all of Pakistan’s leaders were to decide to be on “the same page” with each other, rather than with the military, and drop the practice of jailing the opposition when they are in power.
Third, given the state of Pakistan’s economy, the next government will need to adopt harsher reforms and measures to stay within the International Monetary Fund’s programme that has mandated four priorities: severe budget cuts; return to market-determined foreign exchange rates which will plunge imports; a tight monetary policy to curb inflation, and structural reforms particularly for the energy sector. There is little chance that any government, let alone one that has not won the popular vote, will emerge from this process unscathed. The only way forward is for political parties to forge a common economic agenda.
Fight authoritarian forces
There are other lessons going forward for not just Pakistan but also for other “hybrid” democracies around the world, where governance comes from a merging of democratic and authoritarian forces. The first is that an electorate can never be taken for granted. If voters are a part of the system, then no matter what propaganda, pre-poll measures, or post-poll rigging are employed, it is difficult to ensure 100% predictable outcomes. Pakistan’s first elections in 1970 were able to show just that, as the Awami League won the elections and insisted on forming the government even though Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was jailed. In choosing to muzzle the people of East Pakistan thereafter, its military rulers lost a large piece of their country.
Another significant outcome in 2024 is the poor showing by religious parties such as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam- and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, and the even worse performance of violent extremists such as the Tehreek-e-Labaik, not to mention Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed’s son Talha Saeed. The real lessons, however, are for the polity globally: in the larger laundry cycle of governance, democratically-minded leaders must learn to hang together against authoritarian forces, or risk being hung out to dry sooner or later.
suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in
