Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence chiefs have been busy engaging with university students lately, aiming to sway their minds away from Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Both General Asim Munir and Lt Gen Nadeem Ahmed Anjum warned the youth about the evils of social media and negative propaganda, and reminded them of the military’s ability to secure the country from internal and external threats. Less than a week after these interactions and just 10 days before the Pakistan general elections, former prime minister Khan was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in jail for leaking state secrets.
At a youth convention last week, Gen Munir did not overtly mention Imran Khan and his party PTI. However, he tried to assure the young minds that no real damage was done by removing Khan in 2022 through the vote-of-no-confidence. He also emphasised that not only did such things happen around the world, Pakistanis must feel encouraged that parliaments were allowed to complete their terms. Hence, he stated, there was no issue of political instability.
While General Munir ably described the army’s version of ‘guided democracy’, where governments, especially since 2008, have been kept unstable by not allowing prime ministers to complete their terms, the recent youth outreach attempts indicate that “something is rotten in the state of Pakistan”, to paraphrase a line from Hamlet.
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Odds stacked against PTI supporters
The youth, accounting for over 44 per cent of Pakistan’s vote bank, are highly agitated at the current state of affairs, especially the treatment of Imran Khan and his party. Notably, successive army chiefs since the mid-1990s propped up the PTI, installed it into power in 2018, and then took down the government unceremoniously in 2022, leading to anti-military protests.
Yet, though the army succeeded in removing Khan from power, they’ve struggled to counter his narrative and image as a relatively clean and anti-corruption politician. Ironically, this narrative was cultivated by the army themselves during their efforts to prop up the cricketer-turned-politician.
Now, if sweet talking the youth doesn’t work, force may be the next course of action, as seen in Karachi on 28 January when about 25 PTI workers who had come out on Khan’s call clashed with the police and were arrested.
Fear and frustration have gripped Khan’s support base, but the looming question is, will they come out in droves to vote or stay at home? For the establishment, the preferable option is for the PTI voters to stay home, just as PPP supporters did during the 1990 elections, or for the party to boycott elections. In the latter direction, PTI leader Fawad Chaudhry announced that he and his ‘group’ would boycott the 8 February elections, although this may just be his personal decision to escape the wrath of the army as he is in jail and being tried.
However, even if Khan’s supporters come out in large numbers, the scene is set against them. The biggest blow was the Supreme Court upholding the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan to deny Khan’s party its election symbol (cricket bat). This means that PTI candidates have to stand on individual symbols, making them susceptible to post-election horse-trading and manipulation.
Sources in the party say that the PTI leadership is trying to mitigate this threat by asking its candidates to take an oath not to defect. This may work in the short term but weaken the party’s control over elected members in the long term. Furthermore, lacking a joint symbol, ‘independent’ PTI members will lose the privilege of electing representatives for reserved seats for women and technocrats, unlike other parties. This will end up the party’s presence in Parliament.
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What’s still working for PTI
These visible challenges have not dampened the determination of the PTI support base to vote for the party and back Imran Khan, who has continued to successfully relay instructions/messages from jail. The party continues to pose a challenge to the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), especially in Punjab. It is quite possible that Khan’s recent sentencing will energise PTI supporters to come out and vote in greater numbers.
Some of the young PTI supporters I spoke with were adamant that they would go to vote even in the face of administrative resistance from the army. Their argument that the army’s interference in elections could ‘end’ Pakistan may sound extreme, but it reflects a growing anxiety that constant military meddling will continue to create greater instability even if Imran Khan is out of the actual race. Of course, this support base certainly does not question the army’s backing of Imran Khan in the 2018 elections, during which, suggest sources, about 82 candidates were brought to power with the help of the military.
The PTI, struggling in the face of its top leaders being in jail and Imran Khan being disqualified from contesting the coming elections, continues to embody the political and geo-political conservatism in both society and the state bureaucracy. Its recently announced election manifesto cements that impression. The document upholds the religious symbolism of moulding the state on the pattern of the historic ‘state of Medina’, while the foreign policy framework talks about the importance of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) and working for oppressed people around the world.
This means that if the party comes to power, it is unlikely to deviate from its stance of supporting the Kashmir and Palestinian issues. Its position on Kashmir, in fact, is something that the PTI has in common with the PML(N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which also prioritised the issue in their manifestos.
In addition, the PTI’s proposal to reduce the life of the National Assembly from five to four years and the Senate from six to five, along with advocating for direct elections for the prime minister, not only mirrors the American presidential system but is also a concept favoured by the army. This says something about commonality of thought between the military establishment and the party, despite their being in opposition.
Surely, very few amongst the PTI’s support base will have the time to read the manifesto and see that it does not offer much originality. The supporters will remain enthralled with the anti-corruption sloganeering and the emphasis given to the subject in the party manifesto. However, the document’s release itself indicates that the party remains in the political game. Pushing it out may sound easy but is likely to produce greater anxiety and instability.
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 Asavari Singh)