Pakistan election: Imran Khan puts his enemies to shame

The general election in Pakistan on 8 February has only deepened the crisis in the country. Of course, a positive aspect of the voting is that as many as 128 million Pakistanis went out to cast their ballots in a situation many believed, and quite rightly too, would be manipulated by the establishment. Be it remembered that the establishment in Pakistan is its powerful army, historically notorious for meddling in its politics.

In the days prior to the election, the judiciary, prompted by the military in the background, swiftly went into decreeing convictions and prison terms for jailed former prime minister Imran Khan. The measure was clearly aimed at ensuring that supporters of Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) were deterred from voting since the party was officially out of contention. The Election Commission, again on motivated grounds, had refused to accede to the PTI's demand for the cricket bat as its electoral symbol. The refusal forced PTI figures to register themselves as independent candidates for the National Assembly, each with his or her individual symbol.

Now these Independents have left Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's Pakistan People's Party behind in the vote count. As this commentary was being readied, the Independents, aka PTI, had come by 100 seats out of 246 declared in a chamber of 266. The PML had 69 and the PPP 52 in their bags, in that order, with smaller parties claiming the remaining seats. And yet there are the reasons to think that shrewd engineering went into a manipulation of the results. Suspicions have arisen of the Independents/PTI, which appeared to triumph as a majority party, being cut to size by the establishment.

These suspicions arose owing to the long delay before the Election Commission began to have the results trickle in. Up to a point, though, the delay clearly could not drastically slice away at the numbers of the Independents/PTI, for some credibility needed to be there. After all, the caretaker government and the Election Commission had already come under criticism because of a countrywide shutdown of internet services on the day of the election. If it was a measure to discourage people from streaming to the polling stations --- preventing them from locating their polling centres and texting for cab services to travel to the stations or keeping themselves up to date with election day developments --- it did not work. As the hours lengthened, it was PTI voters who in droves went out to cast their votes for their beleaguered party.

The results have been a clear humiliation for the PML and the PPP, which had had a field day campaigning even as PTI politicians were not permitted to carry their message across to the electorate openly. In fact, most PTI candidates, as Independents, remained away from the public eye, conducting their campaign from their hiding places. Not many in Pakistan thought Imran Khan's followers had much of a chance. The pre-polls assumption was that the battle was between Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, that Sharif was on his way to a fourth anointment as Pakistan's Prime Minister. The 100 Independents simply poured cold water on those assumptions. The ambitions of the Sharifs and the Bhuttos were badly dented by a resurgent PTI.

And yet the election has thrown up the very complicated issue of government formation in Islamabad. Asif Zardari and his son have already been to Lahore to discuss political arrangements with Shehbaz, the younger of the Sharif siblings. With neither the PML nor the PPP securing a clear or single majority and with both parties behind the Independents/PTI in the numbers game, it will be a tough job cobbling a governing coalition into shape. Both the PML and the PPP were instrumental in booting the PTI out of power in April 2022 and so both will now look desperately for the minimum 133 supporters in the National Assembly to form a government.

But where does that leave the 100 Independents? They do not have a party they can join and one can be sure the army, in league with the PML and the PPP, will go out on a limb to make sure that the PTI is not permitted to formally claim the Independents as its own. The paradoxical situation here is that while the PTI has been under ceaseless assault, with its leader in incarceration, it has not been outlawed or deregistered. However, given the animus of the military against the PTI, the soldiers could take recourse to a new stratagem to ensure that the PTI does not rise again as a political force. The election results have been a hard slap for the army. It will not forget the humiliation. It cannot digest the embarrassment.

One will now be watching if the military, along with the PML and the PPP, engages in a new manoeuvre to seduce or compel a good number of these Independents into joining the Sharifs and the Zardaris in order to have a government in place. Such fears are not groundless, for the good reason that Pakistan's history is replete with instances of politicians jumping ship and climbing on to another in their narrow selfish interests. The manner in which the military in recent months compelled a number of senior PTI politicians to abandon the party and fall silent is an instance of how a similar situation could shape up in these post-election circumstances.

The election solves nothing. Pakistan is in grave economic difficulties. In Balochistan province, the army remains mired in violent skirmishes with Baloch nationalists. Its relations with neighbouring India remain bad; and the recent air raids conducted by Tehran and Islamabad on each other's territory point to a new crisis for the country. Besides, the various factions or forms of the Taliban and al-Qaeda remain threats within the country, as certain pre-election killings have demonstrated.

For all their coddling by the army, Nawaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari are up against a moment of hard reckoning. They have not won the election and yet need to give Pakistanis a government. The truth is that if they commit the mistake of ignoring the Independents/PTI in their striving to put a government in place, they will only be adding to Pakistan's woes. Theirs will be a short-lived, chaotic administration if it comes to pass.

One may love Imran Khan or despise him, but he has demonstrated once again, and in greater fervour than before, his hold on the public imagination in Pakistan. His shadow looms larger than earlier across the political landscape now that the election is over. Pretending that he does not exist or is irrelevant will be inexcusable folly on the part of his enemies.

Syed Badrul Ahsan writes on politics and diplomacy