Two weeks after the July 25, 2018 polls, the dust seems finally to be settling on one of the most controversial elections in Pakistan's history. Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) seems to have clinched the numbers to form PTI-led coalition governments in the Centre and Punjab, form the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on its own strength, and be part of a coalition government-in-the-making in Balochistan. The only exception is Sindh, where the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has once again romped home.
What does the victory of the PTI, allegedly with help from the establishment, signify? This question is likely to be debated ad nauseam in days to come. For the moment, suffice it to say that PTI rode to victory on the foundation of its appeal to and support from a rising middle class, women and youth. These communities want tabdeeli (change), but possible disappointment and disillusionment may await them if the PTI is unable to deliver on its (vague) promises of a naya (new) Pakistan.
Essentially the 2018 elections showed how the political landscape and the concatenation of political forces in contention has changed. Spanning the spectrum from the PTI, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), PPP and several smaller parties such as the Awami National Party (ANP), the electoral contest was between right wing, centre-right and centrist parties. Rounding off the mix were the older religious parties grouped in the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and new religious entity entrants such as the Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP) and an assortment of front parties hosting Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and other extremist groups.
Irrespective of how these parties fared in the polls, what was missing from this mix was an effective Left. The few small Left parties that fielded a few candidates did so not so much in hope of victory but rather to utilise the opportunity and relative freedom provided by the elections to pitch their message to the people. The only success the Left could unequivocally celebrate was the election of the sole Left candidate from North Waziristan, Ali Wazir, who is one of the leaders of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM). The rest of the Left candidates in the field failed to garner more than 20,000 votes countrywide.
This result is a moment for reflection, introspection, and analysis of why this was so. First and foremost, given that electoral politics remains the domain of the wealthy who have the material resources to spend the huge amounts of money required to win an election, the Left was at a terrible disadvantage. Based on and reflecting the aspirations of the working people, they could not compete in the resources 'race' by a mile. Second, the Left has yet to produce a coherent, cohesive, internally consistent narrative that deals with the history of Left struggles here and worldwide and pitches a contemporary message that can resonate with and inspire the poor, deprived, marginalised and oppressed. Without putting their heads down to accomplish this intellectual task, the Left has only tired (and perhaps out of date) slogans to repeat, whose origins lie in a different world epoch (the 19th and 20th centuries). Twenty-first century socialism still awaits such a breakthrough the world over, including in Pakistan.
Admittedly the Left has been dealt seriously adverse cards by history here. Glancing back over the 70 years of Pakistan's existence, it is obvious that the Left was relatively weak when the new state emerged in 1947, despite support from unionised workers and peasants, with a sprinkling of youth and the progressive intelligentsia thrown in. Severe repression began in 1951 with the institution of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, the banning of the Communist Party in 1954, and under pressure of circumstances, the remaining Left seeking the umbrella of sub-nationalist parties such as the National Awami Party (NAP). This 'alliance' of the Left and sub-nationalists (Bengali, Sindhi, Pashtun, Baloch before 1971, after which East Pakistan broke away to re-emerge on the map as Bangladesh) proved a mixed blessing. The alliance was not without inner conflicts and contradictions. While the Left owned the sub-nationalists' right to self-determination, including, but not necessarily compulsory, the right to secession, the sub-nationalists tolerated uneasily the expressed ambition of the Left to move beyond the confines of the struggle for a genuine bourgeois parliamentary democracy towards their socialist ideals. The denouement of severe repression and internal differences, through incredible twists and turns over the years, finally ended with the two sides of the alliance going their own way, arguably to the detriment of each.
The hostile environment faced by the Left at independence rested on the power structures inherited from the colonial state, with the 'steel frame' of administration in the hands of the bureaucracy and defence and security handled by the armed forces, both British-trained institutions. As Hamza Alvi has argued, this post-colonial state construct was more powerful, organised and effective than the political class in the new state, the leading lights of which were migrants to the new territories of Pakistan and the rest were a mixed bag of British loyalist large landowners, tribal, clan and traditional chiefs, etc. There was hardly a bourgeoisie, what came to constitute Pakistan being amongst the less industrially developed regions of undivided India. Of course, the dynamic of change over time has reconstituted this elite political class to a certain extent (the PTI phenomenon, as argued above, reflecting this difference). But it is still constituted considerably on the traditional lines inherited at independence.
Imran Khan's programme of tabdeeli (change) essentially boils down to better governance through reform of the state institutions and structures, without challenging the status quo beyond such surface refiguring. The anti-corruption platform of the PTI will only prove credible if the party follows through on its promises of across-the-board accountability free of political considerations (its considerable flaw till now), with the PTI submitting to it first, as promised by prime-minister-to-be Imran Khan. Given the existing political, economic and social power structures, which the PTI does not even pay lip service to disturbing, promises like the creation of 10 million jobs will prove hard to achieve.
Pakistan is hardly the destination of choice for the world's investors today. Without investment, jobs cannot be manufactured out of thin air. And speaking of manufacturing, without investment in the real economy, industry and agriculture first and foremost, relatively peripheral (in terms of investment and employment return) spheres such as services, IT, etc., cannot achieve the ambitious goals the PTI has set itself.
What then, in the present circumstances, should the Left be doing? First and foremost, the theoretical and intellectual task of recasting the socialist paradigm in the light of, and in advance of (anticipatory) 21st century realities is critical if the Left's message is to have receptivity. Second, weakened as they are, the Left must resuscitate its mass fronts amongst the working class, peasantry, women, students, youth, oppressed nationalities, religious minorities and other oppressed sections of society to wage battles of resistance for rights and aspirations. But these resistance struggles must not remained confined to a defensive mode. The critical question is how to incrementally transform these defensive struggles into momentum for real change towards a redistribution of wealth and income, paving the way for a socialist transformation for our times.
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