Pakistan Elections 2024

Democracy hasn’t become a dinosaur (Thankfully!)

During the ‘super election year’ in the world, many countries including the largest and oldest democracies will be attaining electoral legitimacy from their voting citizens. Pakistan being the fifth populous country with zig-zag trajectories of democratic transitions-cum-consolidations held general elections on February 8, 2024. The very happening of 2024 elections was a significant step as the country’s election cycle was badly broken in January 2023 after poly-political crises that gave birth to a lot of scepticism about the very continuation of democracy. Therefore good news is that democracy hasn’t become a dinosaur in Pakistan.

Now, within the constitutionally stipulated 21-days after the 2024 elections, the new parliamentary community has taken oath and elected the custodians of the Houses at the federal and provincial levels.  The country has also new governments born out of the National Assembly and the respective provincial assemblies of the four provinces. All this happened amid highly divided Houses at the federal level and in the most populous province Punjab where the opposition complained and protested about alleged rigging in the elections. The Electoral College, comprised of the federal Parliament (the Senate and the National Assembly) and four provincial assemblies (Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh) will elect the next President of Pakistan on Saturday March 9, 2024. The mid-term election for the Senate will also take place in mid-March. With the completion of this cycle ostensibly Pakistani democracy will be back on track, however, with the vocal presence of a protesting opposition the country will rather inch towards an executive polity than being able to cobble consensus in the parliamentary domain.

The outcome of the 12th general election on February 8, 2024 has surprised many. The country of 247 million inhabitants has 128.6 million registered voters-the majority under 45 year of age. It is considered a huge ‘youthful electoral demography’ in the country’s history. Though the exact turnout has yet to be announced officially by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) the most notable non-profit electoral watchdog in the country FAFEN (Free and Fair Election Network) has calculated voter turnout as 47.6 percent. In the age of democratic reversals and backslides it is a good turnout but it is a down dip when compared with the historical patterns in the country since 2002 election.

Immediately after the Election-2024, Pakistan has been downgraded from a ‘flawed democracy’ to an ‘authoritarian regime’ in the Economist’s annual Democracy Index, although the scoring happened for the year that witnessed the longest spell for constitutional caretakers. There were also fears about avoiding the elections in quest of a technocratic-fixation of the country that is facing enormous economic challenges and lives on International Monetary Fund’s bailout packages, roll overs of forex deposits from friendly countries and continuous borrowings.

A game of chess between online and offline opponents:

Making sense of the verdict 2024 is a difficult proposition on many counts. Is it a paradigm shift in the Pakistani polity or just a momentary populist surge? Only time will tell. Some political analysts are of the view that youthful electoral demography actually rebelled in favor of the imprisoned leader Imran Khan- the same tech savvy youth that was increasingly against the old political elite (for their alleged corruption and bad governance). Due to the constant (and at times vitriolic) attacks on their political opponent in the digital sphere the same netizens/youth were branded as keyboard warriors

During the 2024 election, the tech-savvy supporters of Imran Khan, both within the country and among the Pakistani diaspora creatively applied social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills, tools, techniques and platforms to surpass all traditional contour of electoral campaign in the public sphere. Instead of mass rallies, they relied on virtual jalsas (gathering), X (twitter) spaces, AI generated speeches and messages of an imprisoned leader.

The 'bat' symbol saga:

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf(PTI) was judicially deprived of its election symbol,‘the bat' (cricket bat) . The election symbols in a low literacy polity are of a significant importance to guide the illiterate voters. The tech-savvy supporters of Imran Khan were able to communicate multiple symbols throughout the country in most of the directly contested 266 national and 593 provincial assembly constituencies in four federating units with effective use of technology despite the fact that the Cell Phone services were shut down on the polling day and the Internet was slowed down.

Manifestos or personality?

Personality-driven politics is not confined to the PTI alone, the other mainstream political parties also made their election manifestos public only 10-days before the election. Now at the time of formation of their coalitions they have not come up with any common minimum agendas. Meaning thereby, Pakistani politics is hardly about the core and critical issues that the nation faces. The largest cohort of voters in Pakistan is below 50. One way to interpret this electoral demography is that these are the people who were born or grown-up and educated during the times when there were no students union, labour and trade unions were curbed, civil society and civic spaces had also shrunk. With little spaces to learn about democratic norms, emotions continue to fill the gaps.

The elections are done: What next?

Nevertheless, the outcomes of the 2024 elections have many other lessons as well. Some view that the traditional establishment that used to engineer country’s electoral map by cobbling ‘king parties’ are failing to do it anymore. One way to interpret this is that the majority of population appears to be fed-up with the archaic system of governance and country’s fossilized power structure. It is either this or that the Pakistani society has out-grown the systems and structures that have failed to offer the citizens a better deal during the last 76 years.   Below are some of the ideas and trends that the upcoming government should keep a keen eye on:

• Electoral reforms as a tool of trust building in institutions:

Under sharp criticism remained the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) entrusted to conduct free and fair elections. On one hand the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) has categorized ECP (the election management body in Pakistan) as completely independent from government, on the other hand at the home ground it is at a disadvantage with questionable branding.  How to address this low trust in institutions? Pakistan had taken a twin route to reform its electoral design. The 18th Amendment in 2010 empowered the ECP and insulated the system through neutral caretakers. Ostensibly, both have failed to earn some sort of trust. This has happened despite the fact that entire electoral framework including Election Act 2017 was authored by the political protagonists themselves. Pakistan would have to embark on next generation of electoral reforms in coming months if it wants to avoid chaos in future.

• Coalition and collaboration through dialogue

The people of Pakistan have given a split mandate at the federal level and a clear mandate to various parties in their strong support base at provincial level. Most of the powers and resources reside at provincial level after 18th Amendment.

1. In Punjab-the most populous province the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has formed the provincial government and has offered the first ever women chief minister after inducting many independents in to its folds. However, the overall political turf seems evenly divided between the PML-N and Independents backed by the PTI.
2. In Sindh the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians has further consolidated its position. The province is divided on rural-urban and ethnic lines. Practically it is now a two party province.
3. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the independents backed by PTI have swept the province and the traditional nationalists parties have withered away.
4. In Balochistan, unlike the historical trends of politics along narrow ethnic and nationalist lines the mainstream parties have won and the Pakistan People’s Party is the biggest winner there.

These trends call for a dialogue for federal aspiration and such dialogue has to happen on constitutional forums like the National Finance Commission, National Economic Council and Council of Common Interests. However, the emerging focus is on combo of multiple power centers-SIFC Strategic Investment Facilitation Council.

• Citizens first

As some say democracy is always a work in progress, this time all mandate bearers have to work over time to serve the citizens better. They have to address regional inequalities and disparities through citizen-centric development model, provision of quality education and healthcare, business and agriculture friendly policies and more importantly control inflation and unemployment.