The PML-N has won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly and will form the next government at the center. It has left its two main rivals, the PPP and the PTI, far behind. The party should have no difficulty in getting Nawaz Sharif elected as the next prime minister. The PML-N has also won an absolute majority in the Punjab Assembly and will be able to form the government in the country’s largest province on its own, with Shahbaz Sharif as chief minister.
Yet, on closer examination, the PML-N’s victory is not as convincing as it looks. First, it has again failed to make any inroads in the three smaller provinces. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, its seat tally has actually declined over the last election, while the gains it has made in Sindh and Balochistan are insignificant. Second, due to the idiosyncrasies of the first-past-the-post electoral system, the number of seats the party has won is far in excess of its share of the votes cast and exaggerates its true popularity.
The danger now is that Nawaz will return to the policies and governance style of his past two failed tenures. But that is exactly what he promised in an interview with Reuters on May 4. As he put it, “We are going to pick up the threads from where we left off in 1999.”
Even more worrying is his appeal Saturday night to his supporters asking them to “pray that by morning we’re in a position that we don’t need the crutch of coalition partners”, because with a coalition it is difficult in his view to have “strong governments”. Nawaz needs to understand that the strength of a government does not necessarily come from a large majority in parliament but from following sensible and responsible policies which command as broad a consensus as possible, especially in a federation such as ours.
For the PPP, the election has been nothing short of a catastrophe. Even many of its traditional voters from the most disadvantaged sections of society turned away because of the party’s dismal record in office. Its election campaign was a disaster. It had no leader and no message for the voter. The party relied for the most part on the past achievements, real and claimed, of ZAB and Benazir, not realising that the appeal of the Bhutto name without a real Bhutto is fading and that in any case it has no allure for the new generation of voters.
From being the largest party in the country, the PPP has now sunk into third position, falling not only behind the PML-N but also the PTI. The PPP now has a solid presence only in the rural areas of Sindh, where the traditional hold of the big landowners remains strong. It has been decimated in the other three provinces.
That also happened in 1997 but the party was able to bounce back in 2008. The difference now is that there is little hope of revival this time. Zardari was always a poor substitute for the Bhuttos and, having lost his ability to dispense government patronage, he is unlikely to be able to hold the party together outside Sindh for very long.
Zardari is no doubt the biggest loser of the election. He was able to hold sway for five years because the PPP majority in the National Assembly enabled him to hand-pick the prime minister and other members of the government and dictate policy. He has now lost that ability. His chances of re-election as president next September now look very dim. He will no doubt remain politically active but as a vastly downsized figure.
Potentially, the most significant outcome of the elections is not the PML-N’s victory or the severe drubbing the PPP has received, but the very impressive showing of the PTI. The party is now tied with the PPP for the second place in the National Assembly. The party also has a good chance of leading a coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is a key province in finding a solution to the problem of the Taliban insurgency.
But to keep the PTI success in perspective, it must also be said that the party failed in its challenge to the PML-N’s hold on Punjab and was only able to win a handful of seats in the country’s most populous province. The party’s less than satisfactory performance in Punjab has been compensated by its unexpectedly strong showing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but it should be food for thought for the party’s leadership.
The most important achievement of the PTI is that for the first time since the PPP landslide in West Pakistan in the 1970 election, a significant dent has been made in breaking the monopoly of the traditional parties on Pakistan’s political system. In Punjab, the PTI has replaced the PPP as the main alternative to the PML-N and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa it is now a leading political force. In the other two provinces, though, the PTI presence remains pretty thin.
The change that the PTI promised has not come but it has begun. Bhutto betrayed the promise of 1970 when, after winning the election on the promise of breaking the hold of the feudal and industrial class, he quickly reverted to the traditional politics of patronage, biradari, dynastic alliances and money to stay in power. Now the country has another chance.
This task of bringing about change does not of course end with the election. In fact, the PTI now has a better opportunity to drive this process through its substantial presence in the National Assembly.
Reforming the present electoral system, which gives an entrenched advantage to our corrupt political class, must become a high priority. Not only must those who steal from the public exchequer and cheat on their tax liability be held accountable and excluded from our elected assemblies, it is also essential to substitute the first-past-the-post system (FPTP) with one that reflects the true strength of the political parties.
The flaws of the present system have been highlighted dramatically by the results of last Saturday’s elections, especially in Punjab, where the PML-N seems to be winning more than 80 percent of the National Assembly seats and a similar share in the provincial assembly, although its share of the popular vote is far lower. On the other hand, the number of seats won by the PTI and the PPP in the province is much below the proportion of votes polled by them.
The reverse of this lopsided picture for Punjab can be seen in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In these two provinces, the number of seats won by the PML-N is below its share of votes cast in favour of the party.
It is also because of the distortions of the FPTP system that the smaller parties are often poorly represented or go unrepresented in our parliament. Thus the Jamaat-e-Islami is likely to have only three seats in the National Assembly, all from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, although it won a substantial number of votes in other provinces as well. Similarly, the ANP, which represents a very important segment of opinion in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and is not usually considered a small party, has failed to win any seat in the National Assembly. This is a loss not only for the party but also for the assembly.
In its judgement in the Workers Party Pakistan case in June 2011, the Supreme Court observed that the FPTP system “violates the principle of majority (rule)” and asked the Election Commission of Pakistan to explore ways and means of introducing an appropriate system of election which better reflects the choice of the voters. To bring about the change that the PTI is striving for, it should give due priority to the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement and press for a more equitable electoral system than FPTP, such as proportional representation.
The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service.Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com
Asif Ezdi, "The change has begun," The News. 2013-05-14.Keywords: Political science , Political parties , Political leaders , Political process , Government-Pakistan , Politics-Pakistan , Policy making , Election commission-Pakistan , Elections-Pakistan , Nawaz Shariff , Benazir Bhutto , President Zardari , Shahbaz Sharif , Pakistan , Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , Balochistan , Sindh , Punjab , PPP , PTI , PMLN , FPTP , ANP