RECENT events have made it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to take tomorrow’s election seriously. It’s not just the rat-a-tat sentencing of Imran Khan in the cipher, Toshakhana and iddat cases, but the entire process of decimating his party and debilitating its electoral prospects — by those who helped to propel the PTI into power in 2018.
What’s more, to underline the absurd aspect of the exercise, the same chubby chappie who was — not for the first time — stripped of the right to hold political office back then, is now more or less guaranteed the prime ministerial post for a fourth time. Even his third stint as PM was unprecedented, but evidently the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule doesn’t apply. This isn’t baseball, after all. But then, nor is it cricket.
One can only wonder whether Nawaz Sharif realises that he is potentially being set up for another fall. If his Noon League — as the PML-N is commonly known, given the alphabet soup of Muslim League incarnations — wins outright, its legitimacy will be undermined from the outset. The hybridity will remain intact. The political stagnation and stagflation on the economic front will carry on, amid appeals for bailouts from the IMF and other dubious benefactors.
Pakistan’s relationship with democracy has always been fraught. The first general elections weren’t held until 23 years after independence, whereas India had gone that way in 1951-52. Pakistan intended to follow suit before the end of that decade, but its plan was interrupted by the nation’s first military coup, led by a general (later field marshal) who deemed the nation’s climate unconducive to democracy.
There’s no hope until democracy’s allowed to take its course.
The first general elections had to wait until Ayub Khan was overthrown and were postponed until December 1970 because the October schedule was disrupted by a climatic disaster in East Pakistan. The cyclone/ tsunami was one of the most devastating recorded, and West Pakistan’s insouciance effectively sealed the geographically divided nation’s fate. The Awami League’s absolute majority was rejected by the military rulers with the collusion of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whose PPP had done better than it hoped for in Punjab and Sindh.
Notwithstanding his Machiavellian streak, Bhutto was indeed Pakistan’s first elected PM, the first democratically chosen repository of high hopes, only a few of which were met. The 1977 polls paved his path to the gallows: the military struck just as the government and opposition, after substantial unrest, had agreed on rerunning the disputed polls. The nation’s darkest hour was nigh, and the cloud didn’t lift until Gen Ziaul Haq was died in a mid-air explosion in 1988.
It never lifted completely, though. The pointless partyless elections of 1985 established a pattern whereby clannish allegiances superseded party politics. In 1988, the ISI sponsored the IJI as a vehicle for Nawaz Sharif. It failed federally, but conquered Punjab, and Benazir Bhutto’s first administration was undermined and then dismissed a couple of years later, but Nawaz met much the same fate in 1993; the PPP got a second go before the PML-N returned with a landslide based on a low turnout in 1996. Nawaz considered himself strong enough to handpick his establishment partners, an illusion shattered by the coup of 1999. Pervez Musharraf vowed to exclude Nawaz and Benazir from politics forever, but was obliged by his Western benefactors to cave in less than a decade later.
Readers don’t need to be reminded of what came next, beyond the obvious observation that the establishment remained the chief political arbiter. After throwing out Nawaz for a third time, bets were placed on a relative outsider. Akin to the Trump phenomenon, it helped to build up a personality cult that incorporated illusions but no noticeable achievements. But by the time it was decided to bury Imran Khan under the usual ‘incompetence and corruption’ charges, the backlash was bigger than what the establishment expected.
I have never found any reason to admire Imran as a contender on the political playfield even before he aligned himself with the establishment. It’s hard to see any reason, though, for his PTI to be denied the courtesies afforded to its main adversaries, such as a familiar poll symbol. What’s more disturbing is that none of the leading political parties stands for very much beyond vague promises and the personalities of their leaders. The world’s fifth most populous nation, with its enormous youth bulge, deserves better.
Unlike the now beleaguered Bushra Bibi, I cannot claim to foretell the future. But even lesser beings can foresee that Pakistan will not progress unless the establishment steps back and allows democracy to take its wayward course. The alternative is repeated power failures and, on the day after tomorrow, darkness at high Noon.
Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2024
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