New fault lines

The fact that some parties could not campaign or hold public political activities in 3 provinces is totally forgotten.

It is strange that in post-election analysis, the terrorist factor and its impact on the results has been completely ignored. That certain political parties could not launch their political campaigns and that there were no full-fledged public activities in three provinces is totally forgotten. Is it a case of collective amnesia or since terrorist violence has impacted Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) most severely, it doesn’t matter?

Elections 2013 — held under the shadow of terrorist violence — have given birth to, at least, three new fault lines. First, only political parties with soft attitudes towards extremism and terrorism would be allowed to indulge in open political activities and launch election campaigns. On the other hand, those parties who categorically oppose extremist violence will be physically blocked, with arms, from public political activities. If not arrested and rolled back at this stage, this trend can ultimately enable violent extremists to appoint a government in Islamabad and provincial capitals without first physically capturing them. Has anyone seriously considered the consequences of such an eventuality? Second, the question of regional imbalances has gone to a new height. In the past, the ideologues of our security establishment used to define different areas of the country in terms of their strategic significance for the state of Pakistan. In this categorisation, the province of Punjab was regarded to be the core territory of the country, which had to be defended at every cost. The other provinces were also to be defended as the country’s territories, but the strategic significance of their defence would not be as high as the core area. This doctrine was reflected when conducting wars with India in 1965 and 1971. Similarly, the Pakistani state has not demonstrated the type of sensitivity over the domination of Fata and parts of K-P by violent extremists as it would demonstrate by the occupation of parts of Punjab by these elements. Election 2013 has made it amply clear that terrorists were effectively kept away from Punjab but their violent intervention in the electoral process in K-P and Fata was not a big deal for the state.

The ANP’s election campaign (March 30 to May 11) was the target of 31 brutal attacks killing 61 people including Sadiq Zaman Khattak, ANP’s candidate for NA-254. ANP president Asfandyar Wali Khan wrote a letter to the chief election commissioner with copies to the president, the prime minister and the chief justice of Pakistan but no formal response was received by the ANP. No meeting of the responsible state institutions was held to address the concerns of the ANP. Political leaders, state leaders, and the media that created hype over Imran Khan’s fall forgot to give equal importance to the deaths of 61 innocent ANP workers and sympathisers, who included little children. The elected leaders forgot to condole their deaths. By allowing terrorist networks to electorally marginalise the largest Pakhtun nationalist party, what is the message sent to Pakhtuns? Third, election is about the free choice of people in electing their representatives to govern them. This is what a democratic state is all about. But if a state is either not willing or not capable of stopping violent groups from hijacking the people’s mandate, what type of perception about that state emerges inside and outside the country?

Is it a coincidence that the aforementioned political engineering has taken place in 2013 when all eyes are fixed on the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan and important transitions will take place with the potential of a fallout for the entire region, particularly for Pakistan? In the post-election euphoria, most political analysts are focused on the formation of governments at the centre and in the provinces. They are not paying attention to the serious question raised by these elections. But these issues will not go away even if some circles try to push them under the carpet as they carry enough fire to burn the carpet.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2013.