The route to the elections scheduled to be held on February 8 is not easy to define. At the moment, political parties are down in terms of their profile as election entities. The high courts, the Supreme Court and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) are up by way of visibility and controversy. The media has lost its agenda-setting role, in the face of the state’s control mechanism. The caretaker governments remain arbitrarily installed patchworks of people in charge of decision-making institutions at the federal and provincial levels.

In 2018, the issue at stake was how to keep Nawaz Sharif out in pursuit of what became known as ‘Project Imran.’ The 2024 elections, meanwhile, revolve around Imran Khan. Some want him in at any price, while others want him out equally passionately.

There are several indicators touted about Imran’s popularity among people. These include public opinion polls, reactions on social media platforms and the explosive outbursts by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) supporters on May 9, 2023, following the arrest of Imran.

What is the magic of Imran? This question has puzzled many political analysts. Some do not believe in the available indicators. In their view, opinion polls were either not professionally carried out or were downright fake. The mobility of social media in favour of Imran, emanating from his followers from within the country and more stridently from abroad, is part of the election campaign. It carries immense potential to inject controversy with regards to the winning side.

As Pakistan prepares to head to the polls, the country’s political landscape is riddled with uncertainty. What does the future portend for the various parties? Can the elections lead to stability? And despite systemic institutional failings, can the upcoming elections still provide a ray of hope? A leading political scientist offers his take…

PTI ON THE ROPES

The key to Imran’s charisma is the perceived polarity of his narrative, in terms of ‘us vs them’, ‘friend vs enemy’, ‘good vs evil’, and is underscored by the conflict between the PTI leader and the establishment. This has given a larger-than-life profile to the former in the context of the martyrdom syndrome.

While his initial rise to fame critically depended on the establishment’s input by design, his second rise to fame — after the no-confidence motion of April 9, 2022 — can be attributed to the establishment by default.

Imran Khan has been analysed as a populist leader in the company of such leaders as Donald Trump of the US, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Narendra Modi of India. As a populist, he took up the cause of changing the system, the provision of jobs for the youth and condemnation of dynastic leaders as the people’s enemies. His primary constituency — the middle class — had already cultivated the master narrative of Pakistan for 70 years, based on hatred for the political leadership for its perceived corruption. Both gelled well with each other.

Populism has been increasingly considered a negation of democracy in the name of democracy, be it in Brazil, Hungary, Italy or India. In this framework, a synecdochic narrative plays a crucial role, such as by taking up the cause of large conglomerations such as people, nation and society, with blurred boundaries, if at all. Thus, a billionaire Trump could elicit support from people along anti-establishment lines and indeed mobilise them to attack the Congress building.

Populism de-institutionalises politics, considers the leader as messiah, mobilises people against the ‘other’ (mafias, previous governments, the US) and creates a whirlwind of empty campaign promises. Narcissism is the greatest weakness of populists, because they become prisoners of their own rhetoric. In this way, they miss out on understanding the changing power dynamics on the ground and adjusting accordingly.

Some populists, such as Modi and Erdogan, spent a lifetime operating through the political system and thus developed a political acumen based on realpolitik. However, as a late entrant in politics from outside the system, Imran ended up taking potentially suicidal decisions. He alienated his power base in the establishment by seeking to carve out a niche for himself in the upper echelons of the army and thus divided its leadership, to his own detriment in the end.

Similarly, Imran announced the resignation of his party members from the National Assembly after losing the no-confidence motion, against the advice of the party bigwigs. This was a starkly unimaginative step that made Imran Khan de-platform himself.

More than a 100 PTI MNAs could have massively utilised the floor of the parliament to give a tough time to the new Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government. After the resignations, however, Imran had no option other than going to the street. Later, the PTI tried to withdraw the resignations, but to no avail.

Again, Imran opted for the dissolution of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assemblies, in the vain hope of making a strident comeback in the two provinces through elections within 90 days, as per the constitutional requirement. Imran lost the ground under his feet by ignoring stern warnings against this step by his party’s MPAs, along with the two chief ministers of Punjab and KP.

In desperation, he continued to develop a hostile narrative against the establishment and mobilised the party cadres and workers for a showdown with the latter. May 9 was the result of a gross miscalculation in this context. The resignation from the PTI of former MNAs and MPAs through press conferences and TV interviews — most obviously under pressure — soon decimated the party.

The court cases against Imran and other party stalwarts have practically off-loaded the PTI from the election bandwagon. The Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to de-acknowledge the results of the PTI’s intra-party elections and the withdrawal of its ‘bat’ election symbol led to an outcry on social media against the denial of a “level playing field” to the PTI. Similarly, the large-scale initial rejection of the nomination papers of PTI’s candidates raised questions about the legitimacy of the elections.

Meanwhile, in his essay published in The Economist on January 4, Imran accused the United States of conspiring against his government back in April 2022. Apparently, his diplomatic and financial investment in pursuit of winning over Washington DC to his side in the context of domestic politics failed. He fell back on the default option of conspiracy.

What are the electoral prospects of the PTI? If there is a requisite level of Imran’s popularity in the country — essentially in Punjab and KP — can it lead him to electoral victory? With his party structure in total disarray, scores of electables lost to old as well as new parties, such as the PTI-Parliamentarians group of Pervaiz Khattak and Jehangir Tareen’s Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party, the residual party intelligentsia rendered ineffective and the potential voters immobilised, Imran’s chances of a triumphant march to the prime minister house remain tenuous at best.

As a late entrant in politics from outside the system, Imran Khan ended up taking potentially suicidal decisions. He alienated his power base in the establishment by seeking to carve out a niche for himself in the upper echelons of the army and thus divided its leadership, to his own detriment in the end.

PML-N’S SEARCH FOR AN IDENTITY

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif has gradually moved away from Ziaul Haq’s overtly religious agenda. He has projected his ‘liberal’ profile vis-a-vis peace with India, tolerance of minorities at home and a reluctant acceptance of ethnic parties as legitimate coalition partners. He has shown a remarkable ability to come back to the centre stage of the country’s politics each time after his dismissal as prime minister, in 1993, 1999 and 2017.

But Nawaz has nothing tangible to sell in 2024. His development agenda is worn out, especially after his brother Shehbaz Sharif’s dismal record of governance as prime minister of the PDM coalition in 2022-2023. He has a vast dynastic baggage that includes his brother, his daughter Maryam, as well as Ishaq Dar and others from the larger family network. The usual profile of half a dozen members of the Sharif family during press conferences shows a total insensitivity to gross public criticism of dynasticism.

The PML-N is a party of potential winners. The upper echelons of the party have been occupying cabinet portfolios in Sharif’s successive governments for three decades. This is a geriatric party leadership par excellence. There is hardly any new and modern thinking or thinkers in the party. Youth is not represented in the organisational hierarchy, nor in responsible positions as policymakers, technocrats and image-builders. All this is expected to push the PML-N back to constituency politics during the 2024 elections.

The profile of the PML-N’s street following is abysmal. When the party organised a large public meeting at Minar-i-Pakistan Park to celebrate Nawaz’s homecoming in October 2023, the city of Lahore was immobilised. There is no visible role for the miniscule party intelligentsia for the input function of shaping the narrative, writing a manifesto and organising public rallies, and nor in the output function of putting across Nawaz’s profile as a man for the future rather than a person bemoaning the fact that he was more sinned against than sinning in the past.

The PML-N has failed to put together a formidable party machine that would be organisationally cohesive and technologically advanced. This factor is responsible for the absence of a serious exercise in narrative building. The unenviable combination of a technological vacuum in the party and the traditional leadership from districts in the form of so-called political families may cost the party a straight victory in elections in its heartland in Punjab.

PPP’S PRAGMATISM

As compared to Imran as the fall guy and Nawaz Sharif as the fall-back option of the establishment, the Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Asif Ali Zardari plays it safe. He is satisfied with the role of a backburner, wheeling-and-dealing and waiting for the right time to act.

After Benazir Bhutto, Zardari was able to keep the PPP intact without a Bhutto in charge. The generational transition of leadership in the PPP has not been smooth. Is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari both confident enough about his leadership skills and ambitious enough to take over the party machine as soon as possible?

Bilawal has built his narrative around the classic PPP theme of being treated as an outsider in the larger scheme of things. The focus of his discourse is the denial of a level playing field to his party during the current election campaign. The PPP leadership seems to be reconciled to the loss of Punjab for the voting exercise in 2024, including south Punjab, where it reared hopes of winning some seats. The party’s nomination of Bilawal for prime minister is an ambitious exercise in building the latter’s profile as a national leader.

The PPP has lost its ideological moorings, along with its ideologues. It has no credible second-line command structure. It is struggling to keep its profile as the ultimate defender of Sindh’s rights to counter the claims of nationalist parties. The party is the aggregate of local influentials par excellence.

Since the nationalists do not enjoy a reasonable electoral potential, they have joined hands with the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) led by the Pir of Pagara. The latter has aligned with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), allegedly at the behest of the establishment, in order to contain the voting strength of the PPP during the February elections.

Will the PPP be able to outbid the Sindhi nationalist parties on the ethnic question and keep the political initiative in Sindh in its own hands? Will it be able to show its presence in KP and Gilgit-Baltistan, where Bilawal has addressed rallies, or in Balochistan, where it has been trying to establish a foothold through electables, or in Sindh itself, where it has opened its doors to MQM dropouts?

In case the establishment decides not to put all its eggs in one basket, ie the PML-N, the obvious choice for a second party in line will be the PPP. A member of the caretaker government from Balochistan has recently joined the party. It shows the fluidity of the establishment’s thinking about its choices for establishing workable relations with the major players on the stage.

JOSTLING FOR A PODIUM FINISH

At the other end, ethnic parties continue to be clueless about their electoral prospects, which seem to be far from bright.

The Awami National Party (ANP) in KP does not show signs of an electoral comeback in 2024. A decade of the PTI’s rule in Peshawar has put a dent in the content and style of Pakhtun nationalism and introduced a populist narrative instead, at a heavy cost to the ANP. This is a clear sign of ethnic de-alignment. Meanwhile, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement’s (PTM) credentials as an election entity remain far from established.

The Baloch nationalist parties are in flux in terms of a lack of visibility as contenders for power. As the February 2024 elections draw near, the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) is poised to play a crucial role in any future ruling set-up as an ultra-status quo party. Its connection with the establishment is an open secret. A faction of this party has already joined the PML-N. The other faction has stuck to the parent party. Both are likely candidates for becoming part of the post-election ruling dispensation.

The Balochistan National Party (Mengal) has been in trouble in its own backyard. The Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PKMAP) is divided along two policy lines — one looking towards the federation and the other sticking to nationalist politics. Various middle class elements represent factional groupings operating from different ethnic platforms.

In Islamabad, the rough handling of the Baloch women at the hands of the state machinery during their protest against the enforced disappearance of their menfolk has already sparked a wave of sympathy for them in Balochistan. It has the potential to reshape the political landscape of the province, if it gains momentum through sympathetic media coverage and judicial acknowledgement of the right of protest.

In Sindh, the MQM is struggling to regain its lost ground by uniting its factions, ostensibly put together by the powers that be. Its politics typically follows a four-decade old pattern of seeking to operate in the mould of Islamabad’s political outpost. It will be interesting to see how the seat adjustment between PML-N and MQM in Karachi plays out in the context of an anti-PPP coalitional arrangement.

Among the custodians of the religious front, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) was, till recently, considered a serious contender for power, possibly as a part of a coalition with the PML-N. As the nemesis of the PTI in KP, JUI-F had a visible presence in and around the caretaker set-up in Peshawar. Maulana Fazlur Rehman has been consistent in demanding a delay in holding the elections, especially after the recent terrorist attack on the wedding procession of his son.

The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) has moved away from its ideological trademark, by taking up social and economic issues concerning people’s daily life. In Gwadar, it was able to lead a popular movement for protecting the rights of the people. Its good performance in the local bodies elections in Sindh was rather surprising.

However, it was not consequential in the context of missing out the mayorship of Karachi. Meanwhile, the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan’s (TLP) role carries the imprint of old strategic considerations about tipping the balance in favour of some potential winners.

INSTITUTIONAL FAILINGS

The caretaker government as an institutional entity continues to represent an anomaly in the political system of Pakistan. Under this arrangement, political parties potentially lose initiative in favour of the establishment, which plays a decisive role in shaping the contour of the elections through the appointment of public office-holders at the national and provincial levels.

This government has its footprints everywhere on the route to the elections. It has exercised a stern handling of the media in favour, or against, certain players in the field. It has pursued court cases on way to the disqualification of the PTI leader.

In the current scenario, political parties have no role in the institutional arrangement, personnel management, policymaking or building a consensus about the rules of game to cover the forthcoming elections. This situation is akin to surrender of political initiative to the state apparatuses by the political class, which is the ultimate stakeholder in the elections.

Typically, democracies do not have the provision for a caretaker government, including in Western countries, India and now even Bangladesh, from where Pakistan borrowed this idea in the first place. While devising this formula, Gen Zia used the argument that the PPP government and the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) opposition did not trust each other for holding elections after the controversial polls of 1977. Consequently, the vacuum was filled by a caretaker government, which relied on state functionaries in control of both policy and practice.

There are clear examples of the absence of a level playing field in the recent elections in Bangladesh and on the way to the Indian elections in May 2024. But the conflict resolution mechanism continues to lie with the political class itself, as elsewhere in the world.

Political parties must rethink this abject loss of initiative, because political bargaining and political vigilance need to operate within, and not outside, a political set-up. The appointment of un-elected governments at the federal and provincial levels is the negation of democracy. A constitutional amendment to do away with the provision of caretaker governments is overdue.

The role of the ECP, the prime agency responsible for holding elections, has been in the midst of controversy all around. It has defaulted in holding elections for the national and two provincial assemblies within the stipulated time in 2023. Ultimately, it was the Supreme Court that brought the two offices of chief election commissioner and the president to a meeting point to finalise the date for the elections.

An important feature of elections in Pakistan has been the courts’ indulgence in adjudicature beyond the framework of the ‘political question’ doctrine. Successive chief justices, from Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry onwards — with some notable exceptions — took a moralist approach or even a widely perceived partisan position in the context of what was described as bench-fixing or personalist understanding of public attitudes.

On way to the 2024 elections, the courts have sometimes overturned the verdicts of the ECP or taken controversial decisions during the process of intra-court appeals, mainly concerning Imran. As compared with democracies elsewhere, courts have taken long strides towards judicialisation of politics, not the least because of the acute mistrust of political parties for one another. This is both the cause and effect of the strident input of the establishment in elections for decades.

Constitutionally speaking, the provision for Articles 62 and 63 is discriminatory in nature, inasmuch as it only hits public officeholders among various elite sections of the society. These so-called ‘killer clauses’ have been an instrument of dismissing and disqualifying prime ministers, and thus for destabilising the political set-up. The arbitrary amendments in these articles, added by the 1985 Eighth Constitutional Amendment passed under the shadow of Zia’s martial law, must go.

A SHOT AT DEMOCRACY

There is no democracy if there is no entitled citizenry which can resist the inhibitive hold of political leaders on its imagination. An effective and dynamic election campaign is meant to expose the dormant citizenry to the issue-policy nexus, ie to voting for specific social, economic and administrative issues and a realistic policy package as a mechanism to resolve these issues.

In Pakistan, the deification of political leaders — ranging from Bhutto, Nawaz, Imran and Altaf Hussain, to their lesser compatriots — has ended up dwarfing the citizens. The cult of leadership is akin to sleep-walking in public. This is an indicator of an acute deficit of entitlement of citizens.

What is the envisaged result of the elections to be held in February 2024? Some argue that it would create political stability, by way of providing legitimacy to the next government. However, the past unwillingness of the treasury and opposition benches to compromise on contentious issues, under the PTI and PDM governments, is expected to remain as it is. Political engineering in the form of putting in place workable coalitions will, in all probability, continue in the post-election scenario.

There is no clear indication about the fate of Imran or about the profile of his popularity. Currently, a significant change in any sphere of public policy after the elections is beyond expectation. And yet, the 2024 elections play out a progressive role by fulfilling a constitutional obligation in the form of moving to the source of legitimacy in the form of a mass mandate.

The forthcoming elections represent rare moments of entitlement of citizens in the context of choosing their representatives. Pakistan continues to be a serious candidate for democracy.

The writer is a professor of political science at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums).
He can be reached at waseem@lums.edu.pk

Published in Dawn, EOS, January 14th, 2024