Pakistan’s election hangover

Last Thursday, previewing Pakistan’s election, I said that “Given the disabilities [the PTI, Imran Khan’s party] faces, though, it seems almost certain that the PML-N and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) will win a majority between them.” If you just look at the 266 directly elected seats, you might think that prediction was a fail: the two have a combined total of 129 (PML-N 75, PPP 54), five short of a majority.

In practice, even that would be enough to control the National Assembly, given the number of minor parties with one or two seats each that could be won over. But there are another 70 seats to go, 60 reserved for women and ten for non-Muslims. They’re to be allocated to parties in proportion to their seats already won – and because the PTI was disqualified as a party, and its 93 MPs elected as independents, it can’t participate in that allocation. The PML-N and PPP will take about an extra 55 seats between them, bringing them to a clear majority.

All the same, it’s a much smaller majority than they would have been expecting; some pundits seem to have thought that the PML-N, Nawaz Sharif’s party, would win a majority in its own right. Khan’s “independents” have done very well, and there’s every reason to think they would have done a lot better without the full resources of the establishment turned against them. A fair election most probably would have given the PTI a majority, perhaps a substantial one.

So when Nawaz and PPP leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari try to re-form their coalition, as they have promised to do, they will each be conscious that their popular support is thin. That alone would be enough reason to try to reach some accommodation with Khan or at least some of his followers. Moreover, each knows that joining their strength to Khan’s would provide a more secure majority than relying on each other.

Nor do the PML-N and PTI have much of a history of co-operating: on the contrary, they are bitter historic rivals, and their coalition to oust Khan in 2022 was widely seen as an unholy alliance. In the circumstances, any government they manage to form now will be a precarious one.

The reality is that although the military’s influence this time was thrown in the scale against Khan and in support of Nawaz, all three leaders have a common interest in opposition to the military. Nawaz and Khan have both been overthrown and jailed by them (Khan is still in prison, although it’s hard to imagine the new government will dare keep him there), while Bilawal’s mother (probably) and grandfather (certainly) were both killed at the instance of generals who seized power.

In a rational world, they would all combine their strengths on a common platform of shutting the military out of politics. But in a rational world Pakistan probably wouldn’t exist in the first place, so that will probably remain a pleasant fantasy.

Army chief General Asim Munir has “called on all parties to show maturity and unity,” adding somewhat cryptically that “Elections are not a zero-sum competition of winning and losing but an exercise to determine the mandate of the people.” But the lesson from last week is that what the people really want, as usual, is the right to choose their own government without the men with guns telling them what to do.