Sameen A. Mohsin Ali, Assistant Professor, International Development Department, University of Birmingham
Pakistan held a controversial election on 8 February 2024. It is only now, a month later, that we have some clarity as to the results of that election and on the formation of the government. After a week of negotiations, a consensus has been reached as of 21 February between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to share power along with their allies. However, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and other smaller parties continue to challenge the results of the election even as they seem to prepare to sit in opposition.
Though a new coalition government is now emerging, the events both before and since the election must be understood in light of the cyclical nature of politicking in Pakistan’s hybrid regime. Persistent interference in political, judicial, administrative and economic processes by the military establishment has hamstrung parties and politicians, politicised the judiciary, and hindered economic development. However,
the crisis around the results of the 2024 election has made a bad situation even worse, pushing key institutions even deeper into a crisis of credibility with potentially serious and long-term implications for Pakistan’s regime, its prospects for democracy, and the wellbeing of its 241.5 million people.
Situating the election in context
Democratic processes in Pakistan have long been hindered by its well-resourced military’s interference in politics, experiencing four periods of military rule and numerous instances of unconstitutional intervention in politics in its 75-year history. The military establishment’s persistent interference in politics, the politicisation of the judiciary and bureaucracy, and the weakness of political parties have all contributed to Pakistan being categorised as a hybrid regime. Nonetheless, elections are competitive in the country and have usually been classed as broadly free and fair during periods of procedurally democratic rule, despite irregularities and instances of violence.
Over the past decade, Pakistan’s party system and its voters’ engagement with parties and politicians has shifted.
The rise of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), a party on the centre right formed and led by former cricketer Imran Khan, has increasingly challenged established national parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
The PMLN is a centre right party led by Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif with roots in urban centres in the province of Punjab. The PPP is a centre-left party with roots in the province of Sindh founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and later led by his daughter Benazir Bhutto till she was assassinated in 2017. The party is now led by her widower Asif Ali Zardari and their son, Bilawal Bhutto. The PTI’s support amongst the young people (18-35 years) that make up just over 40% of Pakistan’s voters and the middle classes, and its social media savvy have left these traditional parties far behind when it comes to campaigning and maintaining contact with voters.
Nonetheless, the PTI rapid rise to power was facilitated by the support of the military establishment who saw the party as a means of deposing the PMLN and its leader Nawaz Sharif. The PMLN’s leadership was convicted on corruption charges and its legislators as well as those from other parties were harassed and pressured to quit the party and join the PTI in the lead up to the 2018 election – which the PTI won amidst claims of pre-poll rigging by other political parties. Once in government, Imran Khan as Prime Minister ceded considerable political space to the military establishment, hard won by the country’s political parties after the country’s last military dictator, Pervez Musharraf stepped down as President in 2008. Soon enough, the establishment and Khan fell out over the appointment of the chief of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), the country’s intelligence agency. The establishment then employed the same tools used to put Khan in power to depose him – pressuring legislators to oust Khan’s government through a vote of no-confidence.
Unlike other politicians who had faced such unceremonious dismissals at the hands of the military establishment, Khan publicly lashed out against the military and the army chief in particular on social media and accused the United States of conspiring against him.
The resulting charged atmosphere came to a head when Khan’s (temporary) detention led to protests across Pakistan on 9 May 2023. These protests were a significant turning point because it was the first time in recent history that public anger was aimed at the military with protestors targeting military installations.
The military reacted strongly, arresting scores of protesters and cracking down on the PTI’s legislators and supporters.
The 2024 election and results
The election was delayed well beyond constitutional deadlines, ostensibly due to delimitation being required as a result of a new census. But this delay enabled further restrictions to be placed on the PTI and for its supporters to be harassed so they would renounce the party, tainting the credibility of the electoral process. A court stripped the PTI of its cricket bat election symbol, singling it out for not holding intra-party elections. The party’s candidates were forced to compete as independents with symbols unfamiliar to voters. What is more, Imran Khan was jailed in August 2023, with further convictions being handed down in the lead up to the election, including one regarding the legality of his marriage, dividing opinion on the state’s roles in people’s private lives.
Marred by allegations of pre-poll manipulation by the military establishment, election day itself saw violence in some parts of the country and voters were hindered by the shutdown of cell phone and internet services, ostensibly in the name of security. Prior to election day, most analysts also believed that the suppression the PTI faced would depress voter turnout and favour the party’s opponents. In the absence of exit polls on election day, we can only speculate on voter intent but it seems the establishment’s persistent persecution of the party and its popular, jailed leader had the opposite effect – though turnout was just 47%, the voters that did turn out seemed to be voting against the establishment and favoured PTI-affiliated independents such that they won the most seats in the national assembly – 93 out of 266 , followed by the PMLN (75) and PPP (54).
Part of the explanation for this result also lies in the PMLN’s campaign strategy – enjoying the military establishment’s favour, they behaved as if the results were a foregone conclusion and it seems their voters believed them. But it is also true that the PMLN bore the brunt of making difficult and unpopular policy choices amidst rising inflation when it deposed Imran Khan’s government in 2022 with the backing of the military establishment. In effect, this cyclical process of establishment interference in politics harms parties and makes them less responsive to citizens’ needs and more reliant on establishment largesse for their continued political relevance.
Election results are still contested and the PTI has challenged or intends to challenge a number of seats in the tribunals and courts on the basis of various irregularities.
They may well see some success. But the immensely flawed results management process has severely compromised the integrity of the election, the voters’ faith in the electoral process and in institutions such as the election commission, damaging any remaining belief in the primacy of the will of the people.
Aftermath and implications
Both the PMLN and the PTI declared victory following the election, rather prematurely. While the former invited other parties to form a coalition, the PTI declared that it would not enter into a coalition with any other parties to form a government but would appeal against the results where they had lost seats, claiming that rigging had deprived it of an absolute majority. Meanwhile, the debate had shifted as the other major parties – the PMLN, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and others – met to try and agree terms for a coalition government. Who would the winning independents ally with? Would they stay with the PTI or switch loyalties to join the PMLN or PPP? And what would be on the table in negotiations to form a coalition government?
However, while everyone seeks to be part of government as a means of accessing state resources and dispensing patronage, no one actually wants to govern – or at least not without significant assurances and commitments from coalition partners and more importantly, the express support from the military establishment.
All parties are aware that whoever does take charge will be faced with a series of intractable crises that will necessitate difficult decisions.
The new coalition must conduct urgent complex and painful negotiations with the IMF to restructure Pakistan’s nearly insurmountable debt burden. The people will also be understandably unforgiving, with inflation at nearly 40% in the summer of 2023 while an IMF bailout was awaited to avert default, it remains around 20%. The country’s economy has long been stagnating and the currency has declined sharply against the US dollar.
There has been a surge in violence in the provinces of Balochistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the new government must urgently address its causes, including addressing enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Climate change has also put Pakistan in a precarious position. The country has been hit by extreme natural disasters. It is prone to adverse impacts on crop yields as a result of water shortages and citizens’ health as a result of air pollution.
Unfortunately, any coalition emerging out of the botched election results process lacks a clear mandate. It will be in a precarious position in the eyes of citizens and opposition parties and will struggle to govern a divided federation. Furthermore, political dysfunction enabled by the military establishment’s interference prevents any progress on essential reforms such as for example expanding the tax base to include powerful elites. Over the long term, this will further weaken political forces with respect to the military establishment, leaving room for continued political manipulation. And the military establishment will be looking to reassert itself following what analysts agree has been a massive ‘miscalculation’ on their part.
Perhaps most troubling in this complex scenario is that the election imbroglio has further compromised the credibility not just of parties and politicians, but also of institutions that are integral to holding political elites and the military establishment to account and that provide essential services to the people.
The ECP’s management of the results has been heavily and rightly criticised, and its independence (such as it was) is severely compromised; the politicised judiciary’s treatment of the PTI over the past few months has brought home its lack of independence when it comes to holding powerful arms of the hybrid regime to account. The bureaucracy has long acted as a handmaiden to extra-constitutional forces or to politicians when they are in power, but the 8 February election has compromised them even further.
None of this bodes well for Pakistan, for its democratic prospects, and most importantly, for its citizens.
Sameen A. Mohsin Ali — Assistant Professor of International Development at the University of Birmingham, in the International Development Department (IDD). She was previously Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. She completed her PhD in Politics and International Studies from SOAS University of London in 2018 and holds an MSc in Comparative Politics (Research) from the London School of Economics where she was a Commonwealth Scholar. Sameen’s research interests lie in investigating political and administrative (in)stability through the lens of bureaucratic and party politics, institutional design, and the politics of aid, with specific reference to Pakistan.
