New Delhi: As Pakistan goes to polls Thursday, all eyes are on whether the country’s all-powerful army’s current favourite Nawaz Sharif will manage to get a majority.
Sharif’s real worry are the independent candidates fielded by the now-jailed Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The popular former prime minister has also exhorted his followers to come out and vote in large numbers.
Experts said the elections looked like a fixed match by the army which has thrown its weight behind Sharif, just like it supported Khan in the last polls. But a lot depended on whether PTI supporters would play spoilsport, they added.
The general elections are taking place almost six months after former prime minister Shehbaz Sharif handed over power to caretaker PM Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar.
Among the many challenges the new government will face are economic recovery, lowering of the political temperature and rising violence in the country.
On the eve of the polls, 26 people were killed and at least 30 were injured in back-to-back blasts in Balochistan.
The new government will also potentially have to seek a new bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the $3 billion stand-by arrangement (SBA) clinched in July 2023 ends in March 2024.
The South Asian country has knocked on the doors of the IMF at least 23 times since 1958, and has required an SBA at least 12 times in its history, which underscores the perennial balance of payments issues it has faced.
In the run-up to the polls, the PTI has seen a severe crackdown on it by the state. The party is competing without an electoral symbol with its top leaders Khan and his foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi convicted in a myriad of cases and barred from holding electoral office.
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Main political actors
The Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N), the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Khan’s PTI are the three major parties going into polls.
Three-time prime minister Sharif is the front-runner to lead the country, after returning in October 2023 to Pakistan following a four year self-imposed exile.
Sharif was removed from office in 2017 on charges of corruption — similar to the ones faced by Khan today — and was staring at a lifetime ban from politics which was overturned by the courts in time for the 2024 general elections.
He is aiming to lead Pakistan for a fourth time, but it is a nation very different from the one in 2017 when he left office.
Inflation in Pakistan was near 30 percent in December 2023. When Sharif left office in 2017, it stood at roughly 5.2 percent, according to the State Bank of Pakistan.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the former foreign minister of Pakistan till the caretaker government took over, is also in the mix. His father Asif Ali Zardari was the president of Pakistan from 2008 to 2013. His mother Benazir Bhutto, another former prime minister, was assassinated in 2007.
Bhutto Zardari and his party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), have been focusing their campaign on the youth of Pakistan and also climate change. According to Reuters, the PPP was not expected to win the elections outright, but could be a potential kingmaker.
Though Imran Khan is in jail, and his party faces a state-sanctioned crackdown, the PTI has evolved its campaign around social media, according to Reuters. The party has registered its candidates as independents as it had been stripped off its famous “cricket bat” symbol last December.
Khan was ousted as prime minister after his party lost a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly in 2022. He blamed the military and the US for his ouster.
Candidates affiliated to the party have been reported to be hiding in safe houses and covertly campaigning, while their family members were threatened by jail, as reported by the New York Times.
An independent candidate the PTI claimed was representing them, Rehan Zeb Khan, was assassinated on 31 January in what appears to be a “targeted killing”, according to law enforcement authorities.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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