Democracy, Military, and Coalition Talks: Pakistan's Post-Election Quandary

Ibnul Ammar 

There are two countries in the world that were created based on religion. One of them is Israel, which was created to establish a Jewish state. Another one is Pakistan, which was created to establish an Islamic state. Pakistan is a country comprised of multiple races and languages. Although the official language of Pakistan is Urdu, it has different tribes with their own languages. For instance, Panjabi tribes speak Panjabi, Shindi tribes speak Shindi, Kashmiri speak Kashmiri, and so on. Before Pakistan gained independence in 1947, it was with India, known as the Indian subcontinent. Both Pakistan and India were under the colony of British. However, before the British left the Indian subcontinent, they divided it into two parts, known as the two-nation theory. According to the theory, both Muslims and Hindus are different nations for which there must be two different countries. For that, in 1947, Pakistan was created as a Muslim country while India was created as a Hindu country.

Though Pakistan follows the democratic parliamentary system, the military has significant influence in the politics of Pakistan. For instance, the nation had three military coups between 1958-1971, 1977-1988, and 1999-2008, for which martial law was established, and as a result, military officers became the de facto presidents. Although the 2013 general election was held without any military intervention, the military again intervened in the 2018 general election where the ruling party PTI (Pakistan Justice Party) was backed by them under the leadership of Imran Khan as prime minister. However, Imran Khan was again sued by the military, and the military didn’t let his party contest with their own party name in the last election that was held on 8^th February 2024. The fact is that Imran Khan was sent into prison for filing some political cases against him, and at the same time, his party was prohibited from joining the upcoming election with their own party name. For this reason, his party candidate contested in the general election as an independent candidate. Although Imran Khan’s candidates won the majority seats, they had to go under one political party to form a government since all his candidates won as independent candidates.

 Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N), leading Nawaz Sharif, and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) are the two ancient political parties in Pakistan.  Though the party was founded in 1993, it was basically the root of the Muslim League, the ancient Muslim political party in the whole Indian subcontinent. The party PML-N was established mainly based on the Centre-right and conservative political thought. On the other hand, the PPP was founded in 1967 with Centre-left and social-democratic political thought under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The other party, known as the Pakistan Justice Party (PTI), was founded in 1996 with ‘The Pakistan Movement for Justice’. Imran Khan is basically a well-known Pakistani cricketer and was also a team captain. Pakistan's cricket team won the World Cup in 1992 under his leadership. For this reason, he became very famous all over Pakistan, especially among young generations. Therefore, after entering politics, cricket lovers, especially young people, started becoming fans of him. Therefore, people support PTI mainly because of Imran Khan.

While there are several Islamic political parties in Pakistan, the major Islamic political parties include Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rahman). Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan was founded by Sayeed Abul Ala Maudoodi in 1941 with the slogan Islamic politics. Initially, Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan was on the side of a mass movement, and it initially opposed the establishment of Pakistan since an Islamic country is being established by following British constituencies. However, it decided to join electoral politics in 1957, and still now, they are participating in every general and local election. On the other hand, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rahman) is a Deobandi Sunni political party that was established in 1945. In 1988, Maulana Fazlur Rahman split and established his own party with the same name along with his followers. While Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan failed to win a single seat in the recent general election, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazlur Rahman) managed to win four seats in the general election.

The post-election situation in Pakistan is now very critical. Here, PTI got 93 seats, PML-N got 75 seats, and PPP got 54 seats. Another party, known as Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), has a social liberal and secular ideology and managed to get 17 seats in the recent election. Although PTI got the majority parliamentary seats, they had to go under one party to form a government since the party leaders contested in the election independently without a party logo. However, there is a possibility to form a coalition government by both PML-N and PPP. The conversation between the two parties is still going on. In this case, both parties must have an understanding of each other. This understanding part is now becoming more challenging. Even if they agreed to form a government together, will the understanding between the two parties last till the end or not is a bigger question. On the other hand, the military body continuously interferes in political matters. All these show that the future of the country is full of uncertainty and instability.