ISLAMABAD: As the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif prepares to hand over power to a caretaker administration ahead of general elections due in November, political pundits widely foresee the formation of a coalition government and say ‘king’s parties’ formed in recent months neither have a vote bank nor a powerful narrative to sway votes.
Sharif’s government has proposed that parliament be dissolved a few days before the end of its term on August 12, giving the caretaker government 90 days to hold a general election, which would fall in early November.
The election is seen as critical to restoring political stability to a country that has been rocked by economic turmoil and mass protests and unrest since Imran Khan was forced out as prime minister in a vote of no-confidence in April last year.
Last week, Khan was arrested after a trial court in Islamabad convicted him of charges arising from the sale of state gifts — a verdict likely to end his chances of running in upcoming general elections.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, arguably the most popular in the country, was already facing an unprecedented crisis since May 9, when violent protests erupted following his arrest in a separate land graft case and his supporters ransacked government and military properties.
The army called the day of the protests a “Black Day” and vowed to punish those involved. Since then, thousands of Khan’s supporters have been arrested, and hundreds of his top party members, including his closest aides, have defected after they faced pressure from what is widely believed to be the military establishment, which denies the charge.
Many former Khan associates have since gotten together to form two new political parties, the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-Parliamentarians (PTI-P), both widely referred to as king’s parties, a common euphemism in Pakistan for one favored by the all-powerful military, which has ruled the South Asian country for nearly half of its 75-year history.
Meanwhile, Khan, already behind bars, faces a spate of other legal cases too, with charges ranging from terrorism to contempt of court to murder.
Against this background, what does the future hold for Pakistani politics?
“What I foresee is so far no party will get a simple majority and they will have to go for a coalition government,” Brig. (retired) Haris Nawaz, a defense and political analyst, told Arab News.
He, however, warned that a coalition government or hung parliament would not be able to steer the country out of its myriad economic and political crises.
“For the best economic revival and political stability, the ideal thing is that one party, whomsoever Pakistani people vote for, should come with simple majority,” he said.
“When you come with a simple majority, [it] means you don’t go in coalition, you don’t need coalition partners, you don’t fall into blackmailing. A coalition government cannot deliver what a proper, fully mandated one simple-majority party can do.”
But would the newly formed parties, with senior leaders from Khan’s PTI, be able to get mass support?
“They are definitely the new king’s parties but actually the problem is they do not have a new narrative and they don’t have a vote bank, and I don’t see many electables in them,” longtime political observer Sohail Warraich, widely believed to be the foremost expert on Pakistan’s constituency politics, told Arab News.
And the formation of the parties had also come “too late,” said Nawaz.
“It is too late, particularly, when after just [a few] days the assembly will be dissolved. When will they bring their manifestos, when will they get in touch [with the masses]? These are big question marks.”
Political commentator and rights activist Mehmal Sarfaraz said “experiments” like the IPP and the PTI-Parliamentarians had been tried in the past also, but had “hardly ever been successful.”
“From IPP to other splinter groups of PTI, the plan seems to be to give a home to PTI defectors who have had to leave their party post-May 9 events even if a lot of them didn’t want to,” she added.
Tahir Naeem Malik, an assistant professor of International Politics at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), said he viewed the formation of the new parties as an attempt to keep major political parties “under pressure.”
“The purpose behind their formation is that the two other major parties, the PML-N and the PPP, should not be strengthened,” he said, referring to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of PM Sharif, which is ruling in the center, and the Pakistan People’s Party, which has the government in Sindh province and is a coalition partner of Sharif’s administration.
“We have been seeing for the last 75 years that party politics are cut down to size and factions are created within political parties,” Malik added, calling it “unfortunate” that political parties, in their quest to stay relevant and in power, did not realize that they were being “weakened” in the long-run through such moves.
Instead, political analyst Mazhar Abbas suggested, political parties needed to stick to basic principles and ensure that their conduct did not damage democracy.
“Political parties among themselves should formulate a code of conduct for respecting each other,” he said. “There have to be few underlying principles of democracy and of accepting the voices of dissent.”
But what does the future hold for Khan, amid a widening crackdown against his party and after his arrest?
“One can’t say whether PTI is completely out of the scene, but temporarily, definitely, PTI is in deep trouble,” Abbas said.
“One has to wait and see whether PTI or Imran Khan will be in the race or not [in upcoming general elections], because if he is allowed to contest the elections, if his party remains intact and is allowed to freely contest the elections, then in a free and fair contest, PTI has every chance to emerge as a strong party,” the commentator added.
“But if Imran Khan is disqualified or in jail, or PTI faces hindrance in contesting the election, then definitely other groups or a hung parliament will emerge.”
