Parliamentary elections will be held in Pakistan on Thursday 8 February to choose the new deputies of the National Assembly, i.e. the lower house of Parliament, who will then elect the new prime minister. The elections are highly anticipated because they come after a few years of protests and major political turbulence, but they will not be particularly hotly contested.
The main reason is that the electoral process is heavily influenced by the Pakistani army, which has always had an exceptional importance in the political, economic and social life of the country, and which in recent months has strengthened its control over the political and electoral process. For almost half of Pakistan’s history (34 years out of 76) the generals have governed directly, through military coups, and subsequently the army has nevertheless had a role (in most cases decisive) in the choice of all the first ministers of the country.
44 parties registered for the elections but the most important are three: the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the Movement for Justice (PTI), whose leader is the former Prime Minister Imran Khan, currently in prison, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), led by Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. The confrontation between Imran Khan, the deposed prime minister, and the political forces close to the army has been at the center of the entire election campaign, and it is expected that the PML-N, which led the last coalition government, will win formed after the army ousted Khan in 2022.
Although the elections are formally democratic, the army’s influence on the vote is clear to the entire population. The Pakistani army has enormous powers and enjoys special laws that effectively allow it to impose very serious penalties on anyone who criticizes the military. His influence dates back to before independence and partition from India and is extremely evident: from 1947 to today, no prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term because he is often deposed, sometimes even in a coup before the deadline expires. Its influence is so pervasive that Pakistan has often been called a “hybrid regime”, in which the military is almost always behind civil governments.
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The exceptional influence of the army has once again been discussed in newspapers and international politics due to the very harsh clash between former Prime Minister Imran Khan and the army leaders. Khan is an extremely popular politician and his party is considered to be leading the main polls on voting intentions. However, he is not officially a candidate since he was removed from his position as prime minister in 2022 and has been in prison for more than a year: in recent weeks he has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison for a series of crimes including corruption , dissemination of state secrets and for not having properly entered into marriage with his third wife, Bushra Bibi. Above all, he was banned from active political activity for five years and was therefore prevented from running as a candidate.
According to Khan and his supporters, the convictions are politically motivated, and an attempt by the military regime to prevent him from participating in the country’s political life.
Imran Khan speaks during a press conference in 2023 (AP/KM Chaudary)
According to numerous reconstructions, the military manipulated the results of the 2018 elections to attribute the victory to Khan and make him prime minister. Within a few years, however, the relationship between Khan and Chief of Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa began to worsen, and in mid-2022 the military once again used its influence to convince the PPP and PML-N to vote in parliament for the no-confidence vote against Khan and to remove him. In his place, a coalition government led by these two parties was created and Shehbaz Sharif, brother of Nawaz Sharif, was elected as prime minister.
In response, Khan began a very harsh campaign against the army, taking advantage of the enormous popular following he had and organizing large demonstrations throughout Pakistan in which he accused the army of contaminating the democratic life of the country and in which he called for new free elections . It must be remembered that Khan himself is far from a reformist leader and a sincere democrat: in his four years in government he has repeatedly been accused of authoritarian tendencies and of attempting to repress the opposition.
However, since Khan has been in prison, the army and the government have hit his party hard, arresting thousands of collaborators, candidates and supporters. From May to October, over 80 PTI members left the party under strong external pressure: some of them said they were tortured and released only after publicly announcing that they had left the party. Second the independent organization Human Rights Commission of Pakistan at least four of them have been forcibly disappeared, while many others are in hiding for fear of arrest.
According to several international observers, in recent months the government he prevented some PTI politicians from campaigning, censored the party’s journalistic coverage and blocked internet access several times to prevent viewing of its rallies organized via streaming. The party’s symbol, a cricket bat which refers to Khan’s past career as a cricketer, was also made illegal. For this reason, in many constituencies PTI candidates present themselves with symbols reminiscent of her.
Nawaz Sharif, center, speaks during an election rally in January 2024 (AP/KM Chaudary)
Although popular support for the PTI is high, it is not a given that this will translate into votes, due to the pressure exerted by the army. Even less obvious is that these votes will be counted fairly, even if the Pakistani Foreign Ministry has said that there will be 92 international election observers attending the counting, including those from the European Union and foreign embassies.
It is therefore very likely that the winner will be the party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was himself deposed by the army in 2018 and who in recent years had fled abroad to avoid having to serve several years in prison following trials very similar to those taking place against Khan. Sharif did not get official support from the army, but a few weeks before his return to Pakistan his convictions and lifetime ban from public office had been overturned by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. However, Sharif enjoys considerable support from the population.
There are 342 vacant seats: 266 will be filled through a majority system for single-member constituencies, where the candidate who gets even one vote more than the others is elected, while the remainder are reserved for women and religious minorities and will be filled according to an electoral system proportional.