Tag: Imran Khan

Lahore, Pakistan – Four months after Pakistan was originally scheduled to hold national elections, the country’s 128 million voters will on Thursday get the chance to pick their next federal government amid a pre-poll crackdown on former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party and a climate of political and economic instability.

More than 90,000 polling booths spread across the nation of 241 million people will open at 8am local time (03:00 GMT).

In addition to the 266 seats in the country’s National Assembly, voters will also elect members to the legislatures of Pakistan’s four provinces. In the National Assembly, a party needs at least 134 seats to secure an outright majority. But parties can also form a coalition to reach the threshold.

Voting will continue until 5pm local time (12:00 GMT), and if the tabulation of results occurs smoothly, the winner could be clear within a few hours.

Yet, analysts are already cautioning that the true test of Pakistan’s tryst with democracy will begin after the elections, when a new government will be confronted by a host of challenges it will inherit, and questions over its very legitimacy.

“While the election results might bring a sense of temporary stability, it is increasingly clear to the public and party leaders alike that long-term sustainability can only be achieved when this cycle of political engineering is broken,” analyst and columnist Danyal Adam Khan said, referring to a widespread sentiment in Pakistan that the election process has been influenced by the country’s powerful military establishment to deny a fair chance to Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

Just a day before the election, three bomb blasts, two in southwestern Balochistan and one in Karachi, Sindh, left more than 30 people dead. Over the past year, more than 1,000 people have been killed in violence across the country. Despite assurances from the interim government, fears of internet closure in some areas as well as some election-day violence persist.

And the economy is in the doldrums, with inflation hovering around 30 percent, 40 percent of the population below the poverty line, a fast-depreciating currency and nearly three-fourths of the population convinced, according to recent polling, that things could get even worse.

Turning tables

Many voters and experts have told Al Jazeera that those challenges have been compounded by attempts to subvert free and fair elections.

In Thursday’s elections, the top contender is three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, called the “Lion of Punjab” by his supporters. If his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) wins the most seats, he could potentially become prime minister for a record fourth time.

However, critics argue that his frontrunner status isn’t due to an inspirational campaign, but rather the machinations of Pakistan’s most powerful entity: the military establishment.

Six years ago, Sharif found himself in their crosshairs, first disqualified from the premiership in 2017 and then jailed on corruption charges for 10 years in 2018, just two weeks before elections.

His removal and the PMLN’s downfall were seemingly orchestrated to pave the way for former cricketer and philanthropist Imran Khan’s rise to power. While their initial honeymoon seemed promising, cracks emerged, and after nearly four years, Khan became the first Pakistani prime minister deposed through a no-confidence vote, continuing a telling trend in the country’s 77-year history: no PM has ever completed their five-year term

Khan’s relationship with the military hit its lowest point on May 9, 2023, when he was briefly arrested for corruption. His party workers and supporters rioted in response, targeting government and military installations.

For a country with more than three decades of direct military rule, where the army as an institution is deeply woven into the social fabric, the state’s response to Khan and the PTI was brutal. Thousands of party workers were arrested, and key leaders were forced to resign. Khan himself faced more than 150 cases, many apparently frivolous. He was eventually jailed last August in a corruption case, leading to his disqualification from the election. Last week, he received multiple convictions in different cases.

However, the biggest blow for the party before the February 8 election came in January, when their iconic “cricket bat” electoral symbol was revoked for violating internal party election rules.

The decision meant that Khan and his party, arguably the most popular in the country according to opinion polls, had no option but to field candidates as independents, each with their own symbol.

The PTI also alleges harassment and even abductions of their candidates, forcing them to cut short their campaigns. The party has complained of restrictions imposed on rallies and media coverage of their plight. These allegations have led experts to consider this one of the most tainted elections in the country’s history.

Sharif’s return in November last year coincided with his rival’s imprisonment, and all his convictions and charges were dropped within weeks. A Supreme Court ban on him from contesting elections was lifted, paving the way for him to lead his party.

With Khan behind bars, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, son of former President Asif Ali Zardari and two-time ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto, appears to be the second strongest contender.

As the scion of the Bhutto dynasty and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Bhutto-Zardari has campaigned across the country, though the PPP’s core support remains mainly in Sindh.

‘Mockery of democracy’

The crackdown on the PTI has raised questions about the legitimacy of the elections among many analysts.

Danyal Adam Khan, the columnist, said that while the political clampdown is not completely unprecedented, what has transpired before the polls is a “flagrant mockery” of the democratic process.

“Despite the PTI’s own role in promoting a culture of vilifying political opponents, their success at the polls is a matter for the public to decide,” he told Al Jazeera.

Political analyst Benazir Shah acknowledged the history of manipulation in Pakistan’s elections but said that young voters – the country’s largest demographic – had a chance to make their voices heard.

“Out of Pakistan’s 128 million voters, over 45 percent are between the ages of 18 and 35. Historically, they have not contributed a lot in elections, but it is their moment to shine and voice their opinion,” she said.

Pakistan has historically had a relatively low turnout in polls, with only the previous two elections (in 2013 and 2018) witnessing a turnout of more than 50 percent since 1985.

According to election statistics, from 1997 onwards, the voter turnout of those between the ages of 18 and 30 never crossed 40 percent, reaching a high of 37 percent in 2018.

“Despite all the allegations of pre-poll rigging, I am still hoping for a high voter turnout, where the young people come in and vote for the party of their choice,” the Lahore-based Shah said.

‘Hope is at a premium’

Beyond concerns over political persecution, the dire economic situation looms large. Inflation and currency devaluation paint a grim picture.

The country was on the brink of a default last year when in June, then-Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif managed to get a $3bn International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan package, which is set to expire by March.

Addressing the economy will be the next government’s paramount responsibility, said former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. And to do that, he said, the country’s incoming leaders will need credibility.

“Pakistan is still suffering from the political and economic fallout of the manipulated elections in 2018 [when Sharif was effectively forced out of contention]. However, any perception of manipulation in the 2024 elections will be greatly detrimental for the economy,” he told Al Jazeera.

With the latest opinion polls forecasting a win for the PMLN, questions have been raised about whether the results on February 9 can bring some sort of stability in the country’s volatile political landscape.

Danyal Adam Khan said he expects frustration and anger from those feeling disenfranchised but warns against perpetuating a cycle of vengeance.

Analyst Shah also expressed pessimism, fearing further societal polarisation if the PTI feels unfairly represented.

“I feel there will be further divisiveness in the society if one political party and its voters [PTI] will think they have been suppressed and they will feel they were not given fair representation in the polls. This will be quite damaging to the country in the long run,” she added.

Former PM Abbasi said he was sensing a lack of public interest in the elections, reflecting a lack of optimism.

It would be vital, he said, for Pakistan to develop clarity over the relationships between its political, judicial, and military institutions.

“The post-election scenario will be dependent on the ability of the country’s leadership to address all these issues,” the ex-premier said. “Hope for solutions is at a premium, so we can only hope for optimism to prevail.”

Islamabad, Pakistan — A former prime minister is in jail. Election authorities are busy stopping his party’s candidates from contesting. And another ex-premier, previously imprisoned and then in exile, is now back, with the cases against him dropped.

Less than a month before Pakistan holds its 12th general elections on February 8, concerns are mounting among analysts and sections of the political class that the coming vote might rank near the top of the list of most manipulated votes even in the country’s chequered democratic journey.

Critics point to the crackdown by state authorities against Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and its charismatic leader, Imran Khan, as evidence of widespread rigging that could deny the former prime minister and his party a shot at a fair contest.

Khan, who as cricket captain had led Pakistan to the 1992 World Cup win, has been in jail since August 2023, facing multiple charges including corruption, revealing state secrets, and over attacks on military facilities by his supporters. He has denied all the charges.

Large numbers of his party’s leaders have quit the PTI, seemingly under duress. Many of them are currently underground, seeking to avoid arrest, while others have defected and joined rival political parties.

Multiple electoral nominees from the PTI, including Khan himself, have seen their nomination papers rejected by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the electoral watchdog. Khan was last month forced out of the chairmanship of his party due to his imprisonment. Gohar Ali Khan, a relatively unknown lawyer who joined the party less than three years ago, was named the new head. The PTI is also struggling to keep hold of its iconic symbol, a cricket bat, amid a legal battle with the ECP in the country’s Supreme Court.

“This time around the manner in which PTI and its cadres have been brutalised, it has not happened in the history of Pakistan,” Shayan Bashir, PTI’s information secretary in the state of Punjab, told Al Jazeera.

“Snatching of nomination papers, nomination of candidates in police reports, rejection of nominations on unprecedented scale, forcing PTI candidates to abandon the party under duress, all this evidence is available to show what the party has to endure,” Bashir added.

Fears of election manipulation are hardly new in the country of 240 million people. In fact, longtime observers of Pakistani politics and elections say that historically, most elections in the country have been tainted to various degrees.

In 1990, Pakistan President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed the elected Pakistan People’s Party government of then-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Elections were held, and the PPP – widely popular at the time – lost to an alliance led by Nawaz Sharif, who would begin the first of three stints as prime minister in results that surprised many analysts. In 2012, the Pakistan Supreme Court described the 1990 vote as rigged.

But Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) were victims of what many believe was an unfair election, in 2018, after he had returned to power in 2013.

Sharif was removed from his premiership when he was disqualified for concealing his assets in April 2017, and merely days before the elections, along with his daughter Maryam, he was sentenced to jail for 10 years on corruption charges. Pakistani rights bodies and local election monitoring groups, as well as the international community including the United States and European Union, raised questions about the fairness and transparency of the polls in 2018.

“Irrespective of partisan positions, the 2018 election was pretty bad, which many people don’t accept,” Asma Faiz, an associate professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences told Al Jazeera.

Khan and his PTI emerged victorious in those elections amid raucous complaints of manipulation. Many analysts and Khan’s political rivals suggested that the Pakistani military was the kingmaker behind Khan’s rise, providing him the platform for success at the expense of his rivals.

Pakistan’s powerful military establishment has ruled the country directly for more than three decades of its independent history. Even when not directly in power, the military has been accused of heavily meddling in political affairs, an admission made by its former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in November 2022 during his farewell speech.

This time, some analysts believe, the military appears to have bet on Sharif, who returned to the country in November last year, and has seen courts quickly drop legal hurdles against his candidature.

Faiz, the academic, says that the current environment before the polls is “farcical”. “Parties have changed, leaders have changed, but the method and madness remain the same,” she added.

Tahir Mehdi, a Lahore-based political analyst, says it would be correct to describe the run-up to 2024 polls as fundamentally “as unfair as the previous one”.

“I will prefer to use the word ‘election engineering’ instead of rigging,” Mehdi told Al Jazeera.

Referring to the military establishment, Mehdi said they have now shifted their efforts to engineer things “before the polling day” as it has become extremely difficult to play around with the voting process itself.

“Comparing the upcoming and last elections, the pre-election period shows the same pattern of manipulation,” he said. “The major difference is that those old tactics are facing stronger resistance this time, and secondly the party at the wrong end of the establishment, the PTI, has been more successful in popularising its narrative of victimhood, compared to the PML-N.”

That “narrative” propelled Khan’s popularity – which had dropped to 32 percent per a local survey while he was in office – past 60 percent after he was removed from the premiership in April 2022 through a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

Khan blamed a US-led conspiracy, in collusion with the Pakistani military, for removing him from power, and led demonstrations in the country demanding early elections.

Now with Khan in jail, his beleaguered party is engaged in a battle for survival.

The PTI’s Bashir denied that the party had itself been a beneficiary of election manipulation in 2018, adding that its success then was based on its years-long efforts and thanks to its “campaigning”.

However, Ammar Ali Jan, a historian and a left-wing politician who is contesting the polls with his Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (HKP), argued that a deeper political and social shift is under way in Pakistan in 2024.

“The main issue is that the contradictions in the Pakistani state have intensified, which is giving rise to antagonism in society and institutions,” he told Al Jazeera.

Jan observed that political parties have traditionally played a “negative role”, by bailing out the establishment whenever opportunity arose.

“Earlier, the PTI was entirely on one page with them, and that was followed by the coalition government which came after PTI was ousted,” he said. “Political parties, whenever the establishment is on the back foot, see an opportunity to advance their own goals rather than strengthen democracy.”

That needs to change, Faiz said, calling for political parties to “hold themselves accountable”.

“There are always one or more political parties which are willing to cross the Rubicon and enter some kind of presumed understanding with the establishment. It is unfortunate because the parties refuse to talk to each other,” she said.

“Politics here has now become a zero-sum game.”