Elections 2024: Welcome back to reality
It felt euphoric, didn’t it? Those brief hours on the night of 8 February, when it seemed that the impossible may come true; that we may be witnessing history in the making.
That dream was slowly snatched away in the murky haze of the following days, but the significance of the moment remains. Leader-less and symbol-less, PTI gave the establishment such an almighty scare that they were forced to suspend the internet, delay the count, and engage in near-unprecedented levels of ballot stuffing.
Despite all that, the ragtag bunch of independent candidates affiliated with the PTI managed to emerge as the largest group in parliament, winning 93 of 272 seats. For context, previously oppressed parties such as the PML-N in 2018 and the PPP in 2002 won 64 and 63 seats respectively, even though they were allowed to field candidates under a single electoral symbol. By any metric, this was a historic occasion.
And yet, it is worth acknowledging that the military eventually did end up with the result it wanted. There are about 30 seats where PTI’s allegations of vote rigging appear to be particularly credible due to visible discrepancies between the Form 45s (which tabulate the votes for each individual polling station) and the final Form 47 (which presents the overall vote count for each constituency).
That means, even leaving aside all the pre-poll rigging, the military managed to engineer around a 60-seat swing on the day of the election from the PTI to other political parties—enough to deny them the majority, and sufficient for the other parties to cobble together a coalition government.
But the scale of public disapproval was still inescapable. And so, Nawaz Sharif refused to return as Prime Minister, wary of how tough economic conditions and a weak coalition were likely to further dent his popularity. Even more crucially, Ishaq Dar did not return as Finance Minister.
Allegedly, both the PPP and the military made it clear that they would not support his appointment, as they realise that poor economic management is likely to further fuel support for the PTI. And in a sense, isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work? Where the threat of the opposition forces you to govern a bit more wisely?
So instead, we got Nawaz’s younger brother Shahbaz returning as Prime Minister, with a new face, Muhammad Aurangzeb, appointed as Finance Minister. Shahbaz Sharif has a decent reputation as an administrator, and also played a positive role in securing Pakistan’s last IMF deal, which is promising.
Meanwhile Aurangzeb’s background at JP Morgan and HBL suggests that he at least has some experience of how international capital markets work. It’s a low bar admittedly, but the bar was set at anyone but Dar, and he clears that. With those two, Pakistan’s chances of securing a new IMF loan and avoiding default have increased significantly.
That doesn’t mean the new government still won’t do stupid things. Of course they will. For one, Shahbaz Sharif’s appointment of an all-male federal cabinet means that we will yet again be governed by a bunch of Aitchisonian men in their 60s, so how good can their decisions be really? (Though they did appoint one woman as a junior minister, which somehow feels even more insulting?)
Second, Ishaq Dar is still not completely out of the picture! In fact, he’s the new Foreign Minister (there go our foreign relations down the drain), and he is already using his title to interfere in all things unrelated to him, such as chairing the steering committee on outsourcing of airports just yesterday.
Thirdly, and most importantly, we’re still operating on hope rather than expectation that the new government will undertake long-overdue reforms in taxation and export/import policy, something that has eluded all their predecessors as it would require a paradigm shift in our patronage-driven political economy.
But those are problems for later. For now, we just witnessed a beautiful demonstration of people power, and a significant decrease in the possibility of economic default. I’ll take it.
What I’m reading this week:
The day Pakistan voted in defiance…and hope (Asad Rahim Khan, Dawn)
Pakistan’s new cabinet indicates military’s influence (Umair Jamal, The Diplomat)
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