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Patronage and power plays in Pakistan’s electoral politics

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In Brief

Pakistan’s coming elections are unfolding like a thriller — numerous twists and turns with little sense of what the ending will be.

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The story has taken a darker turn recently with a crackdown on media and dissenting voices. On 6 June 2018, Gul Bukhari, a journalist known for her sympathy with the incumbent Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) party, was picked up by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies for a few hours before being released. Such incidents not only increase fear, but make people sceptical about the fairness of the electoral process.

There is a tangible sense that the army is angling for cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to win the election. The army would like to introduce Khan as a symbol of change who will herald in a new era of politics in the country. Notwithstanding doubts about how much the former cricketer represents change (since his politics appear to be based on compromise and partnering with questionable candidates), it is clear that the military is prepared to push back on parties it favoured in the past like the Pakistan People’s Party and the PML-N to get its way.

The election commission’s decision not to invite foreign observers into the country to monitor the elections has cast suspicion on the integrity of the elections. Foreigners may try to come independently but receiving visas will be an issue because Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency will be screening the immigration process.

The army (which has been a political actor in Pakistan since the country’s first coup in 1958) might not set about overtly rigging the vote itself. But sceptics of both the military and the PTI believe that these groups have engaged in a sort of pre-poll rigging by shifting the country’s political narrative to focus excessively on the issue of corruption. All efforts of Pakistan’s extra-parliamentary forces like the military and the judiciary are focussed on pinning all of the country’s political and economic issues on the misconduct of the ruling PML-N party. The former PLM-N prime minister Nawaz Sharif is coming under tremendous fire due to his name appearing in the Panama Papers scandal.

This narrative certainly benefits Imran Khan who can present himself as ‘Mr Clean’. He is a favourite of the army and the urban middle class, which includes people from peri-urban areas. Over past decades there has emerged a far more nationalist and conservative middle class in Pakistan that is more comfortable with the likes of Khan than Sharif. They are sceptical of Sharif’s agenda to improve relations with India and Afghanistan — two neighbours with whom the Pakistani armed forces do not imagine any compromise.

Some political commentators in Pakistan believe that there is a new generation of voters that will beef up PTI’s influence. This would be in addition to those that will vote for Khan because they are aware that the military establishment is leaning towards him. It is this establishment that Sharif recently labelled an ‘extraterrestrial force’ that influences political events and developments in Pakistan without formally being part of the political system.

Indeed, Pakistan’s politically powerful military — known for being ‘an army with a country’ — has a history of dictating Pakistan’s political circumstances. From the first popularly and democratically elected leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to Sharif and Khan, none could come to power without support from significant segments of the army. After every military takeover and subsequent transition from an army- to a civilian-led government, the military would introduce a new set of politicians. The older ones, especially those who were perceived to be recalcitrants and deviants from the military’s political path, would get punished or pushed out.

Pakistan’s politicians are themselves invested in this patronage-based political system and they are open to manipulation by the army. What matters to their constituents is ultimately their ability to deliver favours and benefits. A lot of voting choices are influenced by ‘which way the wind blows’ in the final days prior to the elections.

The main event will eventually be in Punjab, a province that comprises over 50 per cent of the country’s population and is the base for the military and civil bureaucracy. Some Pakistan watchers believe that the mood in Punjab has changed in favour of Sharif and that people will come out in support of him because they see the former prime minister as having been unfairly targeted by the military.

Despite reports of the intelligence agencies contacting federal and provincial parliamentarians to switch sides, mass desertions from the PML-N have not taken place. This provides some early indication of the ongoing public support for PML-N amid these pressures, especially in Punjab.

What is for sure is that the coming elections are more ideological than ever before. Pakistan will have to choose between being a democracy and a hybrid democracy — that is, a system in which the military makes decisions for which the civilian government takes responsibility.

Ayesha Siddiqa is Research Associate at the SOAS South Asia Institute, University of London.

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