Pakistan election outcome: A bridge to nowhere
As the final results trickle in from Pakistan's recent election, it is already clear that the outcome will not give the nation the fresh start it badly needs. Elections can breathe new life into nations if they are fair, if competing parties present strong policy ideas, and if the electorate gives a strong mandate to one of them. None of this has been true for this election.
No major party presented strong ideas in their manifestos during the election campaign for steering Pakistan away from its huge economic, security, and external problems. The army conducted blatant pre-poll rigging against ex-cricket hero and former prime minister Imran Khan's party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), by throwing its top leaders in jail and forcing others to quit the party or flee. The establishment deprived the party of its iconic bat symbol through a controversial court order and restricted its physical and online campaigning. There are also charges of fixing results on election day.
Yet, PTI received the most seats, but fell short of a simple majority. Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party came next and look set to form an unwieldy, weak, and rigged coalition—with six to seven smaller parties—to keep PTI out, as the army desires. It's almost certain that political infighting will soon plague the alliance, with the all-powerful army—the mother of all conflicts—aiming to keep the alliance docile and defensive. The fact that PTI will have huge assembly numbers and public support will also hamper the new government's process of taking the tough and unpopular decisions needed to deal with the huge problems in the nation. These include taxing powerful elites, reforming the energy sector and state enterprises (which are running on huge losses and require state dole-outs), and cutting the massive subsidies that it gives to elites. The election outcome will not give Pakistan the political stability it needs to tackle these persisting issues. Pakistan is the worst economy in South Asia (with even Sri Lanka rebounding), facing defaults and a high inflation of around 30 percent. The country faces higher security issues than all its neighbours (even Afghanistan) and tense ties with three out of its four neighbours, and Bangladesh.
These multi-pronged problems have plagued the nation for much of its existence since 1947. Today, the stark reality is that both the country that it broke from (India) in 1947 and the one which broke from it in 1971 (Bangladesh) are doing much better both economically and politically. India and Bangladesh's investment-GDP ratios are over 30 percent but Pakistan's is only 15 percent. Pakistan witnessed high GDP growth rates under Musharraf, only for PML-N and PTI to rupture all of it, causing economic crises as the growth was not generated by high investment and productivity but by high fiscal and current account deficits and money supply growth, which caused inflation and free-falling foreign reserves and led Pakistan to return for IMF therapy.
Both India and Bangladesh also inarguably have stable political systems while Pakistan is in shambles. We remain unsure how Pakistan's next political transition will come through: army coup, army-backed removal of a government, fixed elections or prolonged caretaker system. Political parties in most other electoral Saarc states are led by the middle class. Pakistan's two major parties, PML-N and PPP, are led by upper-class industrialists and corrupt elites. Even middle class-led parties like PTI follow populist politics rather than issue-based ideological politics as in other Saarc states. Corrupt and dynastic patronage politics is now Pakistan's main political brand (PPP and PML-N), vacuous populism (PTI) the main challenger, religious extremist politics the main wild card, and terrorist extremist politics the main spoiler—painting a hopeless future for the country.
Why has the proud "ideological" Islamic fortress, created with so much insistence, hype, and hope in 1947, done so much worse than its less pretentious neighbouring states with whom it shares history, culture, and geography? The most immediate answer is that, unlike India and Bangladesh, Pakistan is run by the army which regularly removes civilian regimes arbitrarily, rigs elections, and commits atrocities against those who challenge its stronghold.
Today's situation begs for a historical reckoning, to understand Pakistan's birth conditions compared to its neighbours. India and Bangladesh both had much more grassroots freedom movements led by civilians who had egalitarian ideologies for the masses; Pakistan was led by upper-class elites with no ideology. The purpose of freedom for India and Bangladesh was to escape autocracy and attain democracy; that of the upper-class elites leading Pakistan's freedom movement was to escape democracy and majority Hindu rule. From day one, Pakistan's ruling elite had no vision for progress, nor any urge to ensure democracy.
Pakistan is still marching aimlessly on a bridge to nowhere as other neighbouring states march past it one by one. What will happen to this nuclear state of nearly 250 million people—plagued by extremism, fast-growing population, and a youth bulge—remains unknown. But Pakistan's shambolic state of affairs poses serious threats beyond its borders, regionally and globally.
Dr Niaz Murtaza is an Islamabad-based political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His X handle is @NiazMurtaza2
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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