Elections are hailed as a celebration of democracy, with the transparency of the electoral process serving as a litmus test for the democratic health of a nation. However, as South Asian countries gear up for the electoral season, Pakistan finds itself entangled in an intricate web of uncertainty and instability as it readies for the upcoming elections scheduled for February 8, 2024.
Despite being months past the constitutional deadline of November 8, 2023, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) faces harsh criticism for perceived partisan actions that favour certain political actors while excluding others, jeopardising the legitimacy of the entire electoral process as well as its own credibility.
Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakkar’s reference to George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ during a press conference on January 1, 2024, aptly captures the political landscape. The military-led establishment and the ECP appear busy portraying certain political actors as “more equal than others”. This Orwellian allegory becomes evident in the unequal treatment meted out to political parties, notably rendering the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) grossly incapacitated compared to the favourable conditions provided for the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) led by the Sharif family and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by the Bhutto-Zardari family. This lopsided favouritism brings into question the very independence of the Election Commission.
From the very outset, the overt bias displayed by the ECP towards political actors disliked by the military-dominated establishment led by incarcerated Imran Khan and his party signals the compromised position of the commission at the hands of powers that be. As such, with the announcement of the general elections schedule on December 16, 2023, the myriad systematic obstructions to limit the participation of Imran Khan’s PTI and its allies in the electoral process gathered pace.
Firstly, the establishment ensured that the majority of the nomination papers filed by these “out of favour” political actors are rejected en masse, as evidenced by significant rejections of PTI’s nomination papers. This included those of prominent figures like the incarcerated party chairman Imran Khan and his deputy Shah Mehmood Qureshi, thereby raising concerns about the impartiality of the process. There is a consensus among the rights bodies and election watchdogs that these rejections are politically motivated and aimed at sidelining key opposition figures. The judiciary in Pakistan is also a part of this nexus as it very conveniently sentenced PTI founder Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi to 10 years in prison for allegedly exposing official secrets.
Contrastingly, the Election Commission’s facilitation of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s return to Pakistani politics has drawn attention as well and points to the Orwellian policy of the military establishment. Sharif, presumed to be a favourite of the current military leadership, despite being at the receiving end of military leaders’ whims multiple times in his political career, returned from his self-imposed exile in London in November 2023 as part of a “contentious” deal with the same establishment.
Evidently, the visibly invisible power centre of Pakistan ensured that Nawaz Sharif returns to the country without any legal entanglements by offering him impunity from potential on-arrival arrest through a court intervention. It may be recalled that an anti-corruption court in Pakistan had charged Sharif senior in two major corruption scams of Avenfield case and the Al Azizia Steel Mill case that earned him a collective imprisonment of 14 years. The former prime minister was allowed to travel abroad in 2018 through a Lahore High Court intervention following which he remained in exile only to return now in what many construe as a major deal with the military.
This unequal treatment meted out to political actors, reinforcing the Orwellian narrative, is further demonstrated by how the establishment gradually withdrew its corruption charges against Nawaz Sharif, paving the way for his judicial acquittal and hence facilitating ECP’s greenlighting of his nomination papers.
Furthermore, the ECP robbed Imran Khan’s party of their electoral symbol thereby effectively rendering them incapacitated to participate in the elections as a unified bloc. In its December 22 order, the Commission revoked PTI’s iconic electoral symbol ‘bat’, citing irregularities in the intra-party polls which it deemed “unconstitutional”. The Commission accused PTI of disobeying “with our directions…and failed to hold intra-party election in accordance with PTI prevailing Constitution, 2019 and Election Act, 2017, and Election Rules, 2017.”
The brazen manner in which ECP went overboard in limiting the playing field of Imran Khan’s party meant that PTI engaged in a see-saw battle with the election commission and has been forced to knock on the doors of the divided judiciary of the country. Though the Peshawar High Court (PHC) overturned the poll body’s decision as “illegal, without any lawful authority and of no legal effect” and returned the ‘bat’ symbol to Khan’s party, the commission got its order reinstated by a bench of Supreme Court of Pakistan, headed by Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Isa. The PHC emphasised that by depriving PTI of its election symbol, the ECP would mean that members of “the general public who were willing to vote for the petitioners’ party were deprived of their right to vote as per their choice.” Therefore, the PHC’s ruling was not merely a legal victory for PTI but signified a resounding affirmation of the democratic principles that underpin the electoral process.
However, it appears that ECP found its collaborative partner in denying PTI its election symbol in Chief Justice Qazi Faiz Isa. It may be recalled that Imran Khan, during his tenure as the prime minister of Pakistan, had sanctioned an anti-corruption investigation by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) against Justice Isa’s alleged disproportionate assets. As such, the Supreme Court’s reinstating of the ECP order invited scorn and raised eyebrows about the potential impact of personal history of Imran Khan and Justice Isa over the ruling. The Supreme Court gave a clean chit to ECP stating it was not “victimising PTI” while contesting the PHC ruling that the poll body “did not have ‘any jurisdiction to question or adjudicate the intra-party elections of a political party.’ If such an interpretation is accepted, it would render all provisions in the Act requiring the holding of intra-party elections illusory and of no consequence and be redundant.”
Many constitutional experts expressed their concerns about the impact of the SC ruling on Pakistan’s fluid democratic trajectory by describing it as “utterly ludicrous” and “not just a defeat for PTI but a defeat for democratic norms in Pakistan.” For instance, Michael Kugelman, of the Washington-based Wilson Center, stated in a tweet that the Pakistani establishment’s denial of political space to PTI through systematic obstructions including revoking election symbols was “brazen, not subtle, pre-polls rigging.”
This over-partisanship of ECP not only challenges the legitimacy of its actions but further raises questions as well as cast aspersions over its independence as a constitutional body of Pakistan. Its conduct explicitly highlights how the Commission appears to be in cahoots with the military-led establishment in denying a level playing field to all political parties and electoral participants, thereby compromising its constitutional duties to ensure the integrity of elections, and by extension, undermining the foundational principles of democracy.
The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. His X handle is @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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