Just like most elections in Pakistan, the 2018 polls have been marred by allegations of rigging. Nevertheless, even though numerous cases of bungling in this context can (and have) been highlighted, there is scant reason to believe that had the election been entirely free and fair, Imran Khan’s centre-right Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) would not have been able to win.

According to the final tally announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), PTI grabbed 115 NA seats. However, I believe that in a more free and fair election, PTI would not have bagged more than 90 to 95 seats. But it would still have managed to win more than the centrist Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), and certainly, the left-liberal Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

No matter how marred the elections actually were, they did correctly reflect the highly polarised nature of Pakistan’s polity. The bulk of the votes were split between PTI, PML-N and PPP, with PTI receiving approximately 32 percent.

Rigged or not, the recent polls reflected the highly polarised nature of Pakistan’s polity

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) voters decided to stick with PTI and voted overwhelmingly for the party. The main reasons for this are PTI chief Imran Khan’s continuing popularity in that province; the police reforms that the last PTI government in KP initiated; and, interestingly, the de facto positive image the party’s provincial government in the province enjoyed due to a considerable decrease in extremist terror attacks in the region.

I have used the word de facto because, ironically, PTI was against the military operation that was eventually launched by Pakistan’s armed forces and the PMLN-led federal government in 2015. The relative peace that followed just happened to emerge during a period when PTI was ruling KP.

This time, Punjab — Pakistan’s most populous province — was split in half between PML-N and PTI. The former had swept it in 2013. But in 2018, whereas the ousted PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif’s narrative of him being a victim of ‘establishmentarian intrigues’ bagged PML-N some massive wins in much of central Punjab, the more conservative areas of the province — mainly in the northern and the hilly Pothwari regions — largely switched to PTI. The more feudal-dominated southern Punjab region, too, mostly went to PTI.

Balochistan was as mercurial as ever. As has been the case for decades, its votes were distributed among the ever-splintering and ever-changing secular Baloch nationalist outfits and religious groups.

Sindh was once again swept by the PPP which notched a number of huge wins here, proving to be an unmatched electoral force in the province. A majority of Sindhis have continued to see the PPP as their bridge to the larger politics and economics of the country.

However, the most stunning results emerged in Sindh’s large, chaotic capital, Karachi. Karachi does not have a Sindhi majority. Approximately 41 percent of its enormous population is made up of Urdu-speaking Mohajirs. The city’s second-largest ethnic group is Pakhtun (approximately 22 percent) followed by Punjabi, Baloch, Sindhi and Seraiki groups.

Between 1988 and 2008, the secular and once radical Mohajir nationalist Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) was an overwhelming electoral force in this city. But its vote bank began to slowly dwindle from 2013 onward. The party split into three factions in 2017, leaving the city open for other parties to sneak in.

The PPP, on the other hand, had remained strong in Karachi’s Baloch, Kutchi and Sindhi majority areas, such as Malir and Lyari.

But the party that eventually managed to sneak in was PTI. It nearly swept the city. The PTI had received the second-largest number of votes here in 2013. This time it was able to effectively neutralise the MQM, rather its largest faction, MQM-Pakistan. On the other hand, PTI also evicted the PPP from Lyari, a PPP bastion in Karachi since 1970.

Again, despite all the discrepancies of the election, one can still somewhat explain the stunning results in the city. The voter turnout in Karachi was low (38 to 40 percent). During the last couple of years, the city has witnessed a concentrated police and Rangers’ operation against extremist outfits, criminal gangs and also against so-called militant wings of the now splintered MQM.

But whereas a majority of Karachiites had hailed the operation and the comparative decrease in the city’s once bulging crime rate, MQM and PPP were critical of the way the operation was being conducted. This gave the impression that both the parties were against the operation.

There was thus not much protest when the operation also targeted so-called MQM militants; and members of the Peoples Amn Committee (PAC) — a clandestine outfit patronised by the erstwhile PPP minister Zulfikar Mirza. The PAC was made up of hardened Baloch gangsters from Lyari. Even though the PPP regime in Sindh eventually distanced itself from PAC, it seemed helpless in controlling Lyari’s vicious gang wars.

Both MQM and PPP began to be perceived as parties which were trying to roll back the Rangers’ operation in the city. Interestingly, the PML-N government at the centre enjoyed a brief wave of popularity here, when it claimed that it was PM Sharif who had initiated the operation. It was when Sharif had a falling out with the military establishment that most Karachiites decided to side with the establishment.

As a consequence, in 2018, the political party which was seen as being closest to the establishment received the most votes. That party was PTI. As in KP, here too PTI benefitted in a de facto manner from an operation that it had nothing to do with.

The most striking aspect of the 2018 election was the manner in which the once obscure far-right Sunni Barelvi outfit, Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), managed to bag the sixth-largest number of votes. Most of these votes were cast in Punjab and in Karachi.

The TLP is seen as a more militant reaction against the rise of Deobandi and Salafi outfits in Pakistan. However, in the last couple of years, as militant Deobandi outfits begun to be pushed back by the state, the once non-militant political Barelvi segment not only saw resurgence but got radicalised by the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer.

The TLP got the bulk of its votes in Punjab where many low-income Barelvis saw the PML-N as the ruling party which okayed Qadri’s execution — even though it was the former military chief, Gen Raheel, who had pushed for it the most.

In Karachi, much of the TLP votes were cast in the city’s large working and lower-middle-class industrial area, Korangi, and in the low-income Lyari area.

Low-income and lower-middle-class Mohajirs have continued to belong to the Barelvi sect. Before 1988, they used to vote for Shah Ahmad Noorani’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan (JUP). In the event of MQM’s split, many Barelvi Mohajirs from this economic segment switched to TLP.

In Lyari, the stage for TLP was set by apolitical Islamic evangelical outfits who found many takers there during the deadly gang wars in the area. Consequently, the large Baloch, Memon and Kutchi segments who had already been attracted by the Barelvi evangelical organisation Dawat-i-Islami, saw in TLP a more assertive expression of their reinvigorated religiosity.

But one should keep in mind, the TLP in Punjab and Karachi received the protest vote. Protest votes are largely short-lived. Also, TLP as an outfit cannot survive without street agitation. It is bound to face eventual resistance from the state just as the once patronised Deobandi outfits did.

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 5th, 2018