Elections and prospects

As the date for general elections, February 8, 2024, looms, the election campaign scene exhibits some troubling tendencies. First and foremost, the lack of the traditional excitement and activity by the contending political parties is conspicuous by its absence.

This malaise appears to have affected not only those vying for electoral success, but even those expected to elect them by casting their vote on the day. This apathy could be ascribed to a number of causes, but two or three appear to stand out.

The political parties in the field can be neatly divided between those ‘acceptable’ to the present power structure, and one party in particular that is not. The ‘acceptable’ parties are all those that were part of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition government constituted after the ouster of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government through a no-confidence motion in 2022.

To these could be added parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, and a few minor contenders on the margins.

The ‘pariah’ party in this polarised political environment is only the PTI. If it can be assumed then that the result of the election is a foregone conclusion, what does this say about the legitimacy of the regime to follow, and what effect will it have on its ability to tackle the imposing mountain of troubles the country faces, first and foremost the economic meltdown?

As described by one analyst, the journey of the PTI since its formation in 1996 may be described as one “from partner to pariah”. This is a fairly accurate description of the process whereby the PTI was belatedly ‘picked up’ by the establishment despite it being ignored by General Pervez Musharraf after the 2002 elections held by him, which have joined the growing list of elections in our history either answering to the description ‘manipulated’ (most of them) or whose results were ignored (1970, perhaps the fairest and freest of them all, the brushing aside of whose results by Yahya Khan’s military regime led to the loss of half the country, East Pakistan).

Imran Khan expected to be made prime minister (PM) by Musharraf despite winning a sole seat. Musharraf’s refusal to contemplate the same in favour instead of adorning his new King’s Party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) of the Gujrat Chaudries with the crown, proved too bitter a pill for Imran Khan to swallow and at the same time betrayed his egotistical belief that he deserved the coveted prize irrespective of the rules governing the formation of governments that enjoy a parliamentary majority (whether genuine or not).

That changed after the establishment (post-Musharraf) decided the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) government led by Asif Zardari after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in 2007 and the returned-from-exile Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) were too ‘chummy’ despite their early falling out and PML-N going into opposition because in the background lurked the Charter of Democracy signed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in exile in London in 2006, in which they committed to forego playing the role of the establishment’s plaything against each other, which had been characteristic of the 1990s.

A government and government-in-waiting (the opposition) united in resisting manipulation against each other was too much for the establishment to stomach. Hence came the change of heart and preferred satrap in 2011 when the PTI burst upon the scene through its rally at Minar-i-Pakistan, Lahore, aided, abetted, mentored and allegedly secured by then ISI chief General Pasha.

This change in the PTI’s fortunes fed into the disqualification of incumbent PM Nawaz Sharif in 2017 and the allegedly manipulated result in favour of the PTI in the 2018 general elections that followed. Much to the horror and disappointment of his mentors and supporters in the military establishment, Imran Khan proved hopeless as a PM, failing to produce a single success in the exaggerated programme of development he had announced, and only keeping his government afloat (at the cost of the country) by borrowing in his four and a quarter years’ incumbency 71 percent of all the loans Pakistan had incurred from 1947 to 2018. It is no accident then that the PDM government that followed his ouster was hamstrung by the threat of the country defaulting on its ballooning debt burden.

Having lost the confidence and support of the military establishment that had brought him to power, Imran Khan foolishly believed that he had such overwhelming support within the military that a confident ‘strike’ would produce a mutiny against the successors of COAS Genera Bajwa (his main supporter), i.e. the top command under General Asim Munir.

Nothing else explains the adventure of May 9 when military installations and monuments were attacked and mutilated by the PTI’s leaders and workers. What Imran Khan failed to appreciate was the discipline and unity of command of the military, which was intact.

In the aftermath of the May 9 chaos, those in the upper echelons of the military suspected of sympathy for the PTI were summarily purged, a stampede of PTI leaders of all shapes, sizes and hues were seen recanting on television, and those who refused are to this day being given the run around of cases after cases at which our establishment has proved throughout our history to be extraordinarily adept.

Now, when Imran Khan is in jail and until recently was unable to communicate with his party people, we hear of ‘election’ rallies all over the country by the PTI workers, ostensibly on the call of Imran Khan. If true, this suggests Imran and the PTI have found a way around the wall of silence erected around him since his arrest.

Be that as it may, the attempt was met with the usual tender ministrations of the police, resulting in injuries, arrests and justificatory statements of all kinds from the police and authorities why the baton, water cannon, arrests, etc., were unleashed against the PTI.

Unfortunately, our establishment has proved incapable of learning anything from the past. It is arguable that such repressive tactics merely increase sympathy and support for the perceived underdog, and in our political culture, where the people are still searching for a way out of the quagmire of inflation and unemployment in which they have been trapped for decades and into which they slip further and further day by day, sentiment veers towards support for the victim/s of the establishment, whether deserved or not.

If further proof of this argument is needed, we may glance at the reception Dr Mahrang Baloch and her Baloch Yakjehti Committee have garnered in a massive rally in Quetta after their return from the long march from Turbat to Islamabad in support of their missing persons. One look at the proceedings of that rally and the speech by Dr Mahrang Baloch should clinch the argument that repression beyond reason begets the opposite effect of what was intended.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024