The writer is a lawyer and can be reached on twitter @shahzaibkhan901
The trailblazing, however, doesn’t stop there. In a historic first, the PTI has become the only party to form successive governments in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, decimating opposition in the province and uprooting traditional parties that had won elections for generations.
But hold on, Khan has broken through the seemingly eternal stronghold of the Sharifs and PML-N’s “home ground, Punjab. To be clear, it is Imran Khan and not the PTI coming up with the breakthroughs, it’s hard to imagine the old guard of the PTI winning a single seat without Khan’s charisma sweeping the nation. So, if Imran Khan is able to form a government in Punjab, it will be hard to imagine a more resounding victory for the PTI.
Now, about the hung parliament. Of course, it hurts not to have a simple majority as a party that leads the polls or not to go into an election as part of an existing coalition that can claim a simple majority. It will be difficult with a hung parliament to implement any sort of policy for the new federal government. Having said that, it will be harder to implement any of the highly ambitious policies of the PTI for which it has been elected. The PTI’s agenda is essentially the dismantling of the status quo, for which it has to bring to legislations in a parliament heavily dominated by members of the status quo itself. Many among such members were part of the electables policy of Imran Khan which slowly but surely earned him one of the most decisive victories in recent times. Hence, a hung parliament and the electables now a part of the PTI itself make Khan’s plan to legislate sweeping reforms much harder, or perhaps next to impossible. This is so of course, unless we consider the PTI’s aforementioned breaking of electoral precedents across Pakistan.
Even with a hung parliament, and an assembly full of status quo electables, it is simply the colossal nature of the PTI’s collective win across Pakistan that gives Khan the ability to power through with his agenda. The hung parliament’s impeding nature will be subject to the pressure that Khan’s sheer popularity brings with itself. Any attempt to subvert the agenda of the PTI by factions in the alliance that the PTI forms, will face not only the wrath of the Prime Minister, but also likely of two of the most powerful people after the prime minister, the chief ministers of Punjab and K-P. To think that even Karachi will be up in arms over any attempt to undermine the future prime minister’s agenda will surely get any parliamentary bloc to think twice before becoming an impediment.
So the future prime minister looks good on the hung front, given the sheer size of his victory.
What about the allegations?
With at least five major players in the election, essentially everyone except the PTI, rejecting the vote while counting was still underway, the poll has undeniably dealt a blow. With the current law of elections requiring the Election Commission of Pakistan to announce all results before 2am on the day following the election, the reservations of the aforementioned parties seem quite reasonable. More than two hours after the deadline set by the ECP, the chief election commissioner appeared on television with a rather underwhelming, weary-looking, team around him, to thank a list of people and then announce one paltry provincial assembly result, that too unofficial and incomplete. One unofficial, incomplete result from the election commission itself two hours after the deadline for the announcement of all results. That pretty much describes the election commission’s performance on the day it was required to perform in the last half of a decade, of course. This is disappointing considering the voting exercise itself was done in a reasonably transparent and commendable manner compared to the one of 2013.
But what is worth noting is that with all the parties crying foul, the one most damaged in the process, by the ECP’s glaring incompetence is the PTI. Whatever allegations of irregularities, they need to be investigated as was done in 2013, yet there should be no second thoughts whatsoever about the PTI’s popularity. Had the ECP not been utterly dysfunctional, the PTI would have still been as popular, the results not significantly dissimilar and Imran Khan still the future prime minister.
Imran Khan has clinched a resounding victory, comparable almost to that of Mr Bhutto in the 1970 election. He has decimated electoral status quos, charted new paths in previously fortified territories. On another note, it is unfortunate that the election commission did not deliver, the only thing it promised to, but again, there should be no doubt that having yet to deliver a promised revolution in Pakistan’s governance and administration, Imran Khan has certainly delivered the electoral revolution he promised.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 27th, 2018.
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