Pakistan President Arif Alvi’s letter to the country’s Chief Election Commissioner advising early elections—on 6 November— is at best a deeply political missive meant to confuse everyone—from his own party,the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, to the rival Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz. The clumsily worded letter,which asks the Election Commission of Pakistan to consult with all political parties and seek guidance from the higher judiciary, can further complicate matters. It certainly won’t fulfil the PTI’s wish to have early elections.
According to the 1973 Constitution, the president can call for elections within 90 days of dissolving a government. However, Alvi’s tone indicates that he isn’t eager to upset the apple cart; the letter, while projecting his legal and moral authority to ask for early elections, is just a paper tiger. He sits in a cosy position as head of the state, with no one to throw him out. Alvi cannot even be impeached as there is no parliament in session. The only way he can go out is if he voluntarily resigns.
The president would not be eager to get into a constitutional/legal debate with other parties, especially the PMLN, whose leader Shehbaz Sharif, as the outgoing prime minister, spearheaded a change in election rules. Through an amendment number 23 of the election rules, the ECP was empowered to announce the election dates without consulting the president. Lawyers would argue that in case of a conflict, the president’s constitutional superiority would ensure his power stands. However, the president doesn’t seem to be in the mood to excessively annoy the ‘boys’, as military generals are popularly called. His letter only emphasised his moral duty to insist on early elections rather than taking a firmer stand.
Besides watching over the PTI’s interests, Alvi has to be mindful of his own personal stakes. Last month, he had sought to increase the president’s salary — a move that would naturally enhance his post-retirement pension. He is no different from others in the corridors of power for whom personal interests are supreme. The letter demonstrates that the president is equally conscious of the fact that the powers that be are not keen on early elections.
It certainly cannot happen on 6 November, as PMLN founder Nawaz Sharif will be returning to Pakistan on 21 October. The silent understanding in the political circles is that if the PMLN is to make the next government, then the elder Sharif brother would require at least three to four months to regain some support. But several Lahore-based journalists I spoke to were of the view that even Nawaz Sharif’s presence won’t make it possible for the party to regain ground in its home constituency of Lahore. This is one of the reasons, I am told, that Nawaz Sharif will also contest elections from another constituency in Okara. The seat was previously held by PMLN’s Rao Ajmal Khan.
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PMLN’s play
Despite the president’s political shenanigans, the possibility of elections taking place early next year remains a 50/50 option. Political commentator Raza Rumi is of the view that the elections will take place before February or March 2024 due to Western pressure. The US government and the European Union have been gently reminding Pakistan about the need for electoral democracy to continue in the country. But it is not as if major aid programmes will be stopped if elections are not held on time.
In any case, there seems to be little interest around the world as to how the elections will be conducted. If the status quo is maintained, then a highly questionable interim government, which is not even remotely neutral, will conduct the elections with the intent of making things difficult for Imran Khan and whatever remains of his PTI.
The grapevine in Islamabad is flush with claims that the caretaker Prime Minister, Anwaar ul Haq Kakar,and the entire cabinet were given the impression that they would remain in power for the next nine months. The manner in which non-elected people, such as Fawad Hassan Fawad, principal secretary to Nawaz Sharif during his tenure, are being inducted into the cabinet does not give a lot of hope for early elections. It indicates that the government, or the power behind the government, would like to speed up things before elections are held, or that elections may get delayed further. The fact of the matter, as explained to me by an Islamabad-based journalist, is that if elections are indeed held in November as the president wants, people are likely to be angry with the PMLN and more inclined towards the PTI because of the current economic conditions. “How will Nawaz Sharif even begin to ask for votes from people who have taken their children out of school because they could either pay school fees or electricity bills,” the journalist said.
Almost the entirety of PMLN’s leadership is sitting pretty in London as people suffer a crushing economy. It doesn’t inspire support, at least not in urban Punjab.
The PMLN’s performance in elections will be directly proportional to the economic record of the last Shehbaz Sharif government. Or people’s expectation of what the current interim government will bring would have a bearing on the popularity of the next elected government. Without bringing billions of dollars into the coffers, which Army chief General Asim Munir is promising will come from Saudi Arabia and UAE, there is little hope of high turnout at elections or of the PMLN getting a noticeable majority unless it could find a way to get PTI out of the race.
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Military pulling strings
The military, which for all practical purposes is running the show, is eager for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar to invest in the country. According to sources in Pakistan in a recent presentation held by a senior representative of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) at the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters, a list was laid out of all the assets that the authorities would like to sell. Even if the government were to succeed, it would still not provide urgently needed cash, which could, for instance, stop the forced closure of the national airlines. Not surprisingly, even senior generals, like others with ready cash, are investing heavily in foreign currency. Though claims are made of the Pakistani rupee appreciating against the dollar, the foreign currency is not easy to find in the market.
While an economic miracle is difficult to come by, the establishment may still be able to turn the election results its way through the use of force and manipulation. Imran Khan’s growing popularity is beyond doubt; his party can win elections but only if it is allowed to contest. But the question remains: who and how many would take the risk of contesting elections under the PTI banner?
The Pakistan Army is using the same formula to kill the PTI that it used in the past against others; only this time, the intensity is higher. The party is being made to look like the Titanic that crashed into the army iceberg. The most electable have abandoned the ship for fear of drowning. Those who remain onboard, such as the family of the Nawab of Bahawalpur, have been raided by the police. Interestingly, it is the same family, along with other princely states, which lent Pakistan’s first government the money to run the state after 1947.
Indubitably, Khan will not be able to contest elections. He is already disqualified and will get severe sentencing in the cypher case for violating the Official Secrets Act. Some of his party leaders, like former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, may be used to prove the former PM’s guilt.
The writing on the wall is that Khan is history, at least under the current dispensation in the Army and the government they will help bring to power. Despite his populism, Khan proved more vulnerable because his dependency on the Army was greater than the power of his politics. He made political mistakes that led to his downfall, just as his rivals made political miscalculations that they see as victories. The coming years will be of hybridity — not hybrid democracy but hybrid martial law.
Ayesha Siddiqa is Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. She is the author of Military Inc. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)