Pakistanis get excited easily: almost all our elections are called ‘historic,’ ‘game changers,’ and ‘significant.’ Of course, every election is important, as it gives an opportunity for the political landscape to change. But it is the unchanging part of the elections which has caused and continues to create problems for the country.
The February 8, 2024 elections were, as all elections go, important. Nearly 50% of the electorate exercised their democratic right and the candidates backed by the incarcerated Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) leader Imran Khan bagged the largest number of seats in the national assembly despite months of repression. People are already singing praises for the ‘youth’ – especially those who have come of age since the last election of 2018, of voting in large numbers for Imran Khan’s nominees. Savvy analysts have lauded that this is is a big slap on the face of the (military) establishment, and claimed that people have showed their mettle against all adversity. So far so good.
But the 2024 election results are almost same as the 2018 elections.
In 2018, the establishment-supported PTI won the largest number of seats followed by the then disqualified and later imprisoned Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN), and the Bhutto-Zardari Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). In 2018, the establishment cobbled together a coalition for the PTI, and then in 2022, after Imran’s fall from grace, that coalition broke and a PMLN-PPP led combine came to power for 2022-2023. Today, it seems that the same combine might come back to power, albeit with a few more seats than last time. The vote shares of PTI, PMLN and PP are also largely the same as 2018. The people who ultimately decided the government in 2018, 2022 and 2024 are also the same. So nothing’s changed.
Pakistan’s constant has been the role of the civil-military establishment since its inception in 1947. The first time a government was unceremoniously dismissed was on August 22, 1947, barely a week after independence when the elected Congress government in the erstwhile North West Frontier Province was removed by executive order and replaced by a Muslim League ministry. At that time, the Congress had 30 seats in an assembly of 50, with 19 Muslim seats, while the Muslim League only had 17 Muslim seats.
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The assembly wasn’t dissolved to get a fresh mandate and no session was even called for seven months for the new government to prove its majority. Thereafter, as my work on the integration of the Pakistan princely states has shown, the establishment’s control steadily increased and, by the end of 1948, the bureaucracy and the military directly controlled over half the landmass of the then western Pakistan. The executive dismissal of the first constituent assembly of Pakistan and the resultant Maulvi Tamizuddin case in 1955 then sealed the deal against politicians. Thus, within the first decade, Pakistan set in a certain mould where despite various attempts over the years, the basic equation hasn’t changed.
Pakistan has never had more than a decade or so of even quasi-democratic government in its history. Thus, after two full parliamentary tenures between 2008-13, and 2013-18, the time was nigh for the establishment to wrest some control back.
The restoration of full parliamentary government and the (almost) restoration of full provincial autonomy through the 18th Amendment in 2010 had created structural problems for the establishment which they wanted fixed. Hence, an experiment was launched in the political arena by the establishment – Imran Khan, just like they had done multiple times in the past, from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the 1950s, to Nawaz Sharif in the 1980s. With Sharif forced out of the political arena through dubious cases and his party under extreme pressure – not unlike the PTI this time, Imran Khan was installed as the prime minister in 2018, heading a shaky and a bare majority coalition, where the only glue came from the establishment – a hybrid regime, if you will. With Imran Khan’s fall from favour in 2022 came the now infamous ‘Vote of No Confidence’ in April, and a new approved coalition with PMLN-PPP in the lead which then completed the parliamentary term.
Despite the fact that Pakistan has now completed three parliamentary terms of five years each, democracy has not progressed in the country. All the gains of 2008-2018 have been systematically lost between 2018-2024, and it seems that things might get worse. The reason persists, and its only solution – the emergence of actual anti-establishment politics, still evades the political landscape.
Simply put, unless major political parties agree and persist in the exclusion of all non-political forces from the governance of Pakistan, conditions will never improve. Some analysts have argued that PTI’s votes and seats have shown that the country has reached a tipping point: but has it? Pakistan has had several anti-establishment moments in the past but none have been lasting.
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From Benazir Bhutto’s historic win in 1988 to become the world’s first Muslim woman prime minister, to Nawaz and Benazir signing the ‘Charter to Democracy’ in 2006, to Nawaz’s daring slogan in 2018, ‘Vote ko Izzat doh’ (Give Respect to the Vote). We have been there, and then come back. But will 2024 buck the trend? I fear not.
My fears rest on three premises. First, the anti-establishment narrative carved out by the PMLN and PPP under the Charter of Democracy lasted just over a decade. Once out of power in the centre in 2018, both could not withstand the onslaught of the Imran years and were more than happy to return to the establishments’ loving arms in 2022.
This flip, by parties which have suffered in the past at the hands of the establishment, should not be taken lightly and needs deeper analysis as it exhibits the limitations of being anti-establishment in Pakistan.
Secondly, the PTI is only anti-establishment because the establishment is against Imran Khan. If the tables turn, the PTI will be more than happy to return to the fold. Thirdly, politics is fast changing in the country, where populism and neo-fascism are gaining strength.
The PTI has now developed into a party which Pakistan has never seen before. While the party is no doubt popular, its narrative is deeply populist, divisive, and has strong fascist tendencies. Unlike other major parties, it has a deep sense of self-righteousness, and a complete rejection of the legitimacy of anyone else. These twin factors make it impossible to work with any other major political party and prevent its current anti-establishment tilt from being anything more than self-serving. Thus, unless there is a broad, cooperative and lasting anti-establishment political consensus, things will not change.
Over the past year, a former prime minister and finance minister of Pakistan, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Miftah Ismail respectively, have been conducting seminars across the county called ‘Reimagining Pakistan.’ Speaking at the Lahore ThinkFest a few weeks ago, they discussed the contour of a new ‘social contract’ which Pakistan needs to emerge out of this quagmire. But this is easier said than done. New social contracts are usually the results of either revolutions or great social upheavals, both of which seem unlikely in Pakistan in the near future.
Yaqoob Khan Bangash is a historian based in Lahore, Pakistan.
