Sharif ouster upsets Pakistan’s election calculus
Parliamentary elections are scheduled in Pakistan for July 25 and the country is seized with an election fever with intense speculation among its 107 million voters and unceasing conjecture in the raucous media about possible winners and losers. The stakes are high – this will be the first time a third straight election is being held on time after two consecutive 5-year parliamentary tenures have been completed and, depending on who wins, will determine if democratic consolidation in Pakistan will get a fillip or the country will slide into a more familiar fractious polity.
But what will define the latest election is the ouster of the most powerful and experienced political family from the contest altogether. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar were on July 6 pronounced guilty of money laundering by an accountability court and barred from election. But while Sharif had been disqualified from politics last year, he had been working overtime to get his daughter anointed as his political successor. This will now not be. The ouster of the Sharifs leaves the election outcomes wide open.
In this backdrop, the election is more than just a test of Pakistan’s erratic democratic temperament and sustainability. It is widely seen as a battle of wills and wits between pragmatic parties, such as Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI), seen as supporting a role for the country’s powerful security establishment in governing the country and more idealist parties, such as Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) seeking instead to strengthen constitutional governance that guarantees parliamentary supremacy over all other organs of the state.
The shadow of Pakistan’s chequered electoral history hangs heavy and ominous over the 2018 elections. In its 70-year existence the country should have held 14 elections with fully completed 5-year parliamentary tenures. Instead only 10 have been held with only four parliaments completing their five-year tenures. Six parliaments could average a life-span of barely two years each. Not a single prime minister could complete their five-year tenures despite retaining parliamentary majorities. On the contrary, there have been four bouts of military rule spanning half of the country’s life with each military ruler averaging eight years of absolute power.
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar were on July 6 pronounced guilty of money laundering by an accountability court and barred from election. But while Sharif had been disqualified from politics last year, he had been working overtime to get his daughter anointed as his political successor. This will now not be. The ouster of the Sharifs leaves the election outcomes wide open.
Adnan Rehmat
Pakistan’s electoral politics has essentially been historically dominated by two political parties – the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by former prime ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir Bhutto (who both led the party to power twice each) and currently by Bilawal Bhutto, the son of slain Benazir; and by PML-N of Sharif, who led his party to power thrice. Of the 10 elections held, PPP has come to power five times and PML-N thrice.
Both parties during the 1970s and 1990s were variously but clandestinely supported by the security establishment, mostly against each other, but both fell out of their limited stealth alliance with the establishment after their leaders were loaded with corruption cases that were never proven. In 2006, both parties drafted a Charter of Democracy pledging to not support the establishment against each other anymore and instead jointly struggle for full democracy and constitutional parliamentary supremacy by accepting each other’s electoral mandates and support completion of five-year terms by parliament. The charter was signed by Benazir and Sharif in London who were in forced exile by military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.
The charter eventually helped depose Musharraf and brought PPP back into power a fifth time in 2008, weeks after Benazir was tragically assassinated while campaigning. It completed a rare 5-year tenure followed by PML-N coming to power in 2013, which also completed its first -5-year stint in May but not before Sharif was controversially disqualified from politics for life in 2017.
It is in this backdrop that the July 25 elections are being fought. But, for the first time, a third powerful political contender – Khan’s PTI – has emerged on the horizon that looks set to challenge the dual dominance of national politics by PPP & PML-N and, of latest opinion polls are to be believed, is in a strong position to depose Bhutto and Sharif’s parties. PTI is seen by both PPP and PML-N as being clandestinely supported by the establishment against them considering that over 100 of their former parliamentarians joined Khan’s party ahead of polls and were awarded PTI tickets for the July 25 polls.
Commissioned by Jang Media Group, three separate opinion polls show PTI has made strides in attracting would-be voters in Punjab, the heartland of PML-N, which determines outcomes of all national-level elections in Pakistan. They show that on the back of a strong protest political movement mounted by Sharif against his disqualification and what he claims is the persecution of his party, PML-N remains the preferred party among voters in the country’s largest province of 110 million, but that PTI has gained ground and majorly narrowed the gap with PML-N in Punjab since the last elections in 2013. The court verdict against Sharif last week will compound his party’s problems. But whoever wins on July 25, Pakistan is set to transit from an era of stable single-party majorities to an age of fractious coalition politics. It could be a PTI-PPP alliance or possibly a PML-N-PPP coalition.
– Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
