Washington Post – February 12, 2024
After Pakistan’s shocking election result, all eyes are on the generals
by Rick Noack
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Four days after a shocking election result rattled Pakistan’s establishment, all eyes are on the powerful generals who have long been seen as the ultimate arbiters of politics in this country.
Their grip, a constant since independence in 1947, suddenly appears in doubt, according to supporters of jailed ex-premier Imran Khan. Candidates backed by the former leader gained more seats in a general election last week than any other political bloc, posing a remarkable challenge to the establishment that appeared determined to suppress them.
Khan’s party remains unlikely to be able to form a government because its candidates fell short of an absolute majority and other parties are unlikely to ally with it. They also all ran as independents and will be at a disadvantage in the complicated process of seat allocation that is expected to favor three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s party.
But the widespread perception among many Pakistanis that Khan’s party, Movement for Justice (known as Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI), is the real winner of last Thursday’s election could have deep implications for the delicate balance between Pakistan’s military and the country’s civilian leaders.
For many Khan supporters, their vote was as much about sending an anti-establishment message as it was about supporting the jailed former premier. “It is now evident that there is much anger against the establishment’s open and constant interference in civilian matters — interference which has only grown over the years because there has been no firm political consensus against it,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper wrote in a post-election editorial.
After Khan ran afoul of the military two years ago, Pakistani officials all but dismantled his party. Many of its leaders were arrested — including Khan, who has been convicted in three separate cases so far — and the party’s offices were raided the week of the election.
The key question now is how the establishment will respond to their unprecedented failure to politically sideline the party: By further cracking down on Khan and his allies, or by trying to reconcile with the ex-premier they once backed?
Pakistan’s military is no stranger to challenges from civilian leaders and the public, however. It has weathered serious political storms in the past and reemerged more emboldened and with a seemingly even tighter grip on politics.
“Some political leaders will always be willing to stand with the establishment and enjoy power,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political analyst. “This election result is a serious setback for the establishment, but ultimately it will prevail, as it has done in the past.”
Pakistan’s establishment, however, could also be underestimating the growing cynicism and anger in crisis-ridden middle-class neighborhoods, which tend to be bastions of support for Khan, a nationalist politician advocating for a European-style welfare state based on Islamic values.
Even though Khan did not deliver on many of his core promises, as even some of his supporters acknowledge, the former prime minister’s appeal could grow further here if the next government excludes Khan’s allies and fails to boost economic growth.
“A weak coalition government is not good news for Pakistan’s economy, which is still in the ICU,” said Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States.
To many of Khan’s supporters, last week’s election is as much reason for resignation as it is for hope.
“We’re seeing a revolution,” said Shakir, 29, who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used because he works for a government department. But he cautioned that if Khan’s party does not come to power in the wake of this vote, fury may ultimately give way to despair and apathy. “Then nobody will come out and vote in the next election.”
Rarely have anti-establishment attitudes been so mainstream and been voiced so publicly than in the days since the vote. Objections to the voting process were raised across the political spectrum, and one candidate from a smaller, traditionally military-aligned party even objected to his own election victory, saying that he was unfairly handed a provincial assembly seat that should have gone to his PTI-backed opponent.
Standing next to a shopping mall in Islamabad, Kashaf Mumtaz, a 26-year-old marketing freelancer, and 23-year-old medical student Shehzadi Najaf said it was clear to them that Khan’s party would not be allowed to return to power any time soon.
But they still came out to vote for his candidates anyway. “We wanted to make it difficult” for the establishment, Najaf said.
Both complained that the country’s military-dominated political system has neglected Pakistan’s younger generations of voters, continuing to elevate politicians such as Sharif, 74, who ran on a pro-business platform that has largely remained the same over the past three decades.
Mumtaz and Najaf pointed to the lengthy delays in vote counting as another symptom of the country’s political flaws. As PTI-backed candidates appeared to take a strong lead early Thursday night in unofficial polls published by media outlets, counting suddenly appeared to slow, prompting allegations of vote rigging and questions from international observers that remain largely unaddressed. It took three days for the final provisional count to be announced.
“Had the military stepped back and not intervened when it became clear that PTI-sponsored independents were doing well, I think that would have been a big boost for the army” in the eyes of the Pakistani population, said Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Wilson Center.
“But the perception among many in Pakistan is that the army suffered a big blow,” he said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/after-pakistan-s-shocking-election-result-all-eyes-are-on-the-generals/ar-BB1i9khH
Pakistan Observer – February 11, 2024
U.S. lawmakers tell Biden not to accept Pakistan election results
Both Democratic and Republican politicians in the United States have urged President Biden not to accept Pakistan election results until the investigation of alleged regularities.
Claims of interference or fraud should be fully investigated “a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department stated in a statement, voiced worries on the interference in the election process.
“We join credible international and local election observers in their assessment that these elections included undue restrictions on freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly,” the statement said.
Congressman Brad Sherman, a prominent member of the influential House of Foreign Affairs Committee stated that” press organizations in Pakistan ought to have liberty to disclose vote tallying and there should not be any needless postponement in declaring the outcome”.
RashidaTalib a congresswoman said that we must stand with the Pakistani people because their democracy is seriously at risk. In addition to that the U.S. must make sure the tax monies don’t go to anyone who undermines their right to freely choose their leaders.
They should be able to do so without intervention or meddling. Another congresswoman Ilhasn Omar asked the State Department that there should be independent bodies who conduct investigations regarding the alleged interference in the electoral process until they refrain from recognizing the results.
She further said that I am deeply troubled by the news of meddling and interference in the election result process. The Pakistani people deserve nothing less than a transparent democratic and true representative government.—INP
https://pakobserver.net/u-s-lawmakers-tell-biden-not-to-accept-pakistan-election-results/
The Intercept - February 10, 2024
Historic turnout in Pakistan is swamping the military’s effort to rig the election
In a turbulent 24 hours following Pakistan’s elections, the U.S.-backed military has proved unable to suppress the populist movement interrogating its authority.
Ryan Grim
LAST YEAR IN Pakistan, a bystander happened to catch, on camera, police raiding the Sialkot home of Usman Dar. At the time, Dar was an opposition candidate representing former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party — which the military and its civilian allies were busy suppressing with abductions, raids, blackmail, and threats. Khan, a populist prime minister, was forced from office in 2022 under military pressure with the encouragement of the U.S.
Through a window, video shows Pakistani police officialsOpens in a new tab assaulting Dar’s elderly mother, Rehana Dar, in her bedroom. Dar’s brother, Umar Dar, was also picked up, though police only acknowledged he’d been arrested much later at a court hearing. When Usman Dar emerged from custody, he announced he was stepping down from the race and leaving the party — as many other PTI candidates have done under similar pressure.
But then came a new wrinkle, a symbol of the refusal of Khan’s supporters to bow to the military-backed government. While the news was announced that Dar was withdrawing from the race, and with another son still missing, his mother went on television to say that she would be running instead. “Khawaja Asif,” Rehana Dar said in a video posted on social mediaOpens in a new tab directed to the army-backed political rival of her son, “You have achieved what you wanted by making my son step down at gunpoint, but my son has quit politics, not me. Now you will face me in politics.”
She was a political novice, an angry mother who represented the country’s frustration with its ruling elite. “Send me to jail or handcuff me. I will contest the general elections for sure,” she said while filing her nomination papers. Those papers were initially rejected — like they were for so many PTI candidates, and only PTI candidates — and she had to refile.
Nevertheless, she persisted. On Thursday night, election night, with her son Umar still in custody, she shocked the country. With 99 percent of precincts counted, she had beaten that lifetime politician, Khawaja Asif, with 131,615 to 82,615 votes. The loss by Asif, who was allied with Nawaz Sharif — the military-backed candidate whose victory Vox had called “almost a fait accompliOpens in a new tab” — was a blow to the army.
Then came one more wrinkle — one that many in Pakistan expected, but which was still shocking. When the full results were announced, Dar’s total had been reduced by 31,434 votes, while Asif gained votes, and he was declared the winner.
Across the country, similar reversals Opens in a new tabare flowing out from Pakistan’s election commission. As polling ended Thursday evening, early results shocked the establishment and even some dispirited supporters of Khan who had worried that Pakistani authorities had successfully done everything they could to manipulate the outcome. Those results suggested a landslide victory for ousted former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party even as Khan himself sits in prison, ineligible to run.
But in several key races, results have suddenly swung toward the military-backed party, after hours of unexplained delays. In the NA-128 constituency, where the PTI-backed candidate is senior lawyer Salman Akram Raja, Raja was leading with 100,000 votes in 1,310 out of 1,320 polling stations. On Friday, he was trailing by 13,522 votes. But the publicly available totals from the polling stations did not add up with the results announced by the election commission. He took the case to high court, which granted him a stay Opens in a new taband stopped the election commission from announcing the winner pending further investigation. Following his lead, multiple PTI candidates have announced that they will take their cases to court. Rehana Dar is one of them.
The problem now for the Pakistani army is that it seems to have been unprepared for the explosion of support for Khan’s candidates. Pakistani election laws explicitly state that the “returning officer shall compile provisional results on or before 2 a.m. the day immediately following the polling day.” But for thousands of polling stations across Pakistan, results were stopped and had not come in even 24 hours after polling ended. Across the country, candidates and their supporters have refused to leave pollingOpens in a new tab locations without official documentation of the vote, leading to tense and violent confrontations.
At the same time, because every polling station is required to fill out and distribute something called a “Form 45,” which has the vote tally from that precinct, political parties and news networks had been able to tabulate official results. That’s how we know that Dar was so far ahead. Those Form 45s are officially aggregated at election headquarters, and a Form 47 is produced totaling all the numbers. Prior to the election, the military succeeded in replacing the election workers with state bureaucrats — a move that was blessed by the country’s Supreme Court only after two dissident justices were forced off the bench. Those workers and their fantastical Form 47s are now the focus of the country’s attention.
The changes in the official counts also finally caught the attention of the State Department, which had secretly supported the nation’s military in its ouster of Khan in 2022. “We join credible international and local election observers in their assessment that these elections included undue restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “We condemn electoral violence, restrictions on the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including attacks on media workers, and restrictions on access to the Internet and telecommunication services, and are concerned about allegations of interference in the electoral process. Claims of interference or fraud should be fully investigated.”
But it was the next line of Miller’s statement that gives Khan’s supporters hope that the theft of the election may not be inevitable. “The United States is prepared to work with the next Pakistani government, regardless of political party, to advance our shared interests,” Miller said. “We now look forward to timely, complete results that reflect the will of the Pakistani people.” Members of Congress have begun demanding the U.S. not recognize a new government Opens in a new tabwithout a thorough investigation of the fraud. Whether that clear mandate is listened to remains an open question.
Prior to the election, many observers had raised the alarm about potential fraud in the Pakistani elections. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International voiced concerns over the possibility of internet shutdown on election day. Those concerns turned out to be warranted; the Pakistani military did indeed shut down internetOpens in a new tab and mobile data for most of the day. When internet returned early on Friday in Pakistan, independent candidates across Pakistan seemed to have a clear majority in Parliament with 127 seats. Trailing far behind were the Pakistan Muslim League, or PMLN, headed by the former prime minister and military backed-candidate, Sharif; and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party, with 65 and 48 seats respectively.
The independent candidates are mostly members of PTI who were forced to run as independent in a court decision that was called “a huge blow to fundamental rightsOpens in a new tab” in Pakistan. The move also deprived PTI of its electoral symbol — the cricket bat — and had the candidates run on randomly assigned symbols.
“PTI backed independents at this moment in the lead in NA, KPK & Punjab assemblies. This is unprecedented,” tweetedOpens in a new tab Mohammad Zubair, a former minister and member of the PMLN. “The unusual delay in the result announcement has made the process completely dubious leaving no moral authority for PMLN to rule.”
On Friday, Sharif absurdly declared victory. From prison, so did Khan, with artificial intelligence being used to simulate his voice reading a statement. “By voting yesterday, you have set up the foundation for true freedom,” the “authorized AI voice” of Khan said, making reference to the “movement for true freedom” he has led since his ouster. “I had complete faith that you would go out to vote. Your massive turnout shocked everyone.”
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/09/pakistan-election-military-pti/
Global Research - February 9, 2024
Elections in Pakistan: Victory of Imran Khan’s PTI Party
By Junaid S. Ahmad
The elections in Pakistan today (Feb 8) were much freer and fairer than I had expected. Hence, the preliminary results simply reflected the obvious for most of us: former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party, PTI (the movement for justice) – facing ruthless repression over the past year – have swept the elections in every single province of the country.
Khan, surviving two assassination attempts and languishing in a supermax dungeon since last August, is more popular than ever. Among the youth, Gallup Pakistan surveys have consistently reported around 80-90 percent support for Khan and his party.
The tyranny of the generals in the military high command along with the kleptocratic and dynastic political parties entailed even the suppression of PTI’s symbol (a cricket bat) and virtually a ban, with horrific consequences if violated, on candidates running on a PTI ticket. Thus, all of these candidates ran as independents.
Of course, we have now become used to one criminal travesty after the next by Pakistan’s military-intelligence apparatus. So, we are cautious about any temporary victory for people’s democracy, triumphing over the Washington-backed totalitarian military and political elite. The latter are in full-blown panic mode, and are trying their best at tampering and rigging before announcing the final results.
The preliminary results, regardless of the fraudulent shenanigans of the national security state expected in the next few days, already represents a resounding defeat of the neo-colonial comprador oligarchy in Pakistan. One just needs to see how highly strung the spokesperson of the State Department was in addressing questions related to these elections.
There is one sign of both hope and danger. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the normally unified and disciplined armed forces are now experiencing deep divisions. The majority of military officers and and 95 percent of soldiers are repulsed by the behavior of Wasington’s minions in the top brass. To the surprise of many of us, these divisions also exist within the intelligence agencies. We are witnessing in an unprecedented way a refusenik impulse within the military. Not to sound like the bogus alarmism we’re used to from Washington think tanks, it’s still worth remembering that Pakistan is a country of 240 million, nuclear-armed.
The Pakistani people badly need international solidarity at this point.
Prof. Junaid S. Ahmad teaches religion, law, and global politics and is the Director of the Center for Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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