'A Severe Assault on Democracy' – Vote-Rigging in Pakistan

BJ Sadiq reports on the fallout from Pakistan's disputed General Election results and the groundswell of support for jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Supporters of Imran Khan's PTI party protest against alleged rigging in Pakistan’s General Election in Peshawar, 17 February 2024. Photo: Hussain Ali/ZUMA Press/Alamy

It is well known that without the patronage of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, no political party may successfully form a government. That was the mood on the morning of Election Day, 8 February, as it had been in the months leading to it. The military had launched a nationwide, cold-blooded crackdown against the country’s most popular political party (PTI) led by former Prime Minister and cricket icon, Imran Khan. Khan remains in jail, serving three separate sentences of more than 10 years. His party went into the elections without its cricket bat symbol, which, in a country with high illiteracy levels, was likely to prove a major hindrance, forcing party members to fight as independents; a strategy the establishment believed should confuse the voters and keep them at bay. It was wrong.  

By early evening on Election Day, there was panic at the Military Headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Preliminary results suggested that PTI-backed independents were leading by a landslide margin, which meant that in spite of all the encumbrances in their way, millions of Khan loyalists, all across the country, had ebulliently shoved into the polling booths to cast their vote.

It was a vote against the military establishment and against Khan’s competitors, comprising chiefly of two leading political dynasties: the PML – N led by Nawaz Sharif, (widely thought to be supported by the military establishment); and the PPP, led by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of deceased former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Nearly 60 million people turned out to vote, an astronomical number, exhausted by lingering inflation, by fears of a sovereign default and insolvency, and tired of a self-loving political and military elite; hoping to see an end to the Machiavellian ways that have become the very pulse of Pakistan’s politics, rendering the state almost ungovernable.