Still stuck in 2013

Legal eye
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
One can be charitable to the PTI for putting up a tough fight in NA-122 – the Sharif heartland so to speak. But here is the bottom line: the PML-N defeated the PTI once again (even if with razor-thin margin) in a key constituency where Imran Khan accused the PML-N of indulging in massive rigging in 2013.
After two years of the PTI’s hostile protests over rigging – which polarised Pakistan – a dharna that demonised all constitutional institutions and almost invited military rule, refusal to accept the judicial commission’s findings in their true spirit and incessant name-calling, the PML-N still won the rematch even if the PTI reduced the PML-N’s lead.
Had Khan been right about the 2013 people’s verdict in favour of the PTI, the election tribunals would have found massive rigging across Punjab, if not Pakistan. Even if we assume that the PML-N influenced a majority of the tribunal judges, the judicial commission would have unearthed the systematic rigging plan through which PML-N stole public mandate. Even if we assume that the SC didn’t want to rock the boat with startling findings, wouldn’t the people of Lahore have afforded the PTI a massive victory when granted the opportunity to avenge expropriation of their mandate by the PML-N in 2013? But none of this happened.
The NA-122 by-election has once again confirmed what the judicial commission and before that the overall outcome of election petitions established: it was the voters and no vile conspiracy that handed power to the PML-N in 2013. But it wasn’t the Sharifs who made NA-122 about 2013 as opposed to 2018. It was Imran Khan. NA-122 could have been a referendum on the PML-N’s performance since 2013, and how Pakistan deserves better – as a midterm by-election ought to be. But it wasn’t. Why? Because Khan is mired in the past. He wanted NA-122 to be a trigger for midterm elections across Pakistan. He lost. Now it is all about 2018.
Use of hyperbole is an effective tool in politics to motivate one’s core support base and reach out to fence sitters. But it is dangerous when a party’s leadership gets so enchanted with its own rhetoric that it begins mistaking it for reality. The amount of time and effort the PTI and Imran Khan have invested in poking holes in the last election makes one wonder if the party at the very top had a realistic estimate of the party’s true prospect in 2013 given the strength of its candidates and state of its electoral machine across all the 272 directly elected seats, notwithstanding the PTI’s surging popularity in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and urban Punjab.
Khan’s response to the by-election result has confirmed that introspection is the most unlikely element to be added to the PTI’s mindset anytime soon. He has yet again spoken of rigging and ‘moral victory’ to a hypnotised self-congratulating party core incapable of generating corrective ideas. To be able to move from number two to number one requires admitting a basic fact: that there is someone ahead of you. If you keep telling yourself that you are already ahead, not in terms of your potential but as an empirically verifiable ground fact, why would you work on your plans, skills or strategy to reach out to the outliers?
The counter-argument is that Khan’s belligerent politics has helped the PTI swell in numbers. Taking on incumbents, whether it’s the PML-N in Punjab, the MQM in urban Sindh or the PPP in rural Sindh, is smart politics for it establishes that the next electoral contest is going to be between the PTI and the incumbents everywhere. And that is what Khan’s angry dharna politics has delivered to the PTI, especially in Punjab: the definite number two position only slightly behind the PML-N, where every individual or ‘dhara’ that wishes to take on the PML-N knows that it is the PTI ticket that offers a real chance of doing so.
There is no doubt that the PTI’s ranks have swelled with its dharna machinations. But when does the law of diminishing returns kick in? Will politics of hate and acrimony be enough to push the PTI over the finish line in first place in 2018? The simpler explanation for the PTI’s steady rise in Punjab is the simultaneous death of the PPP. The age of ideological politics has now passed. And Punjab has always been about X vs Y. It was Estab vs PPP in 1970, PPP vs Estab in the 80s, PML-N vs PPP in the 90s, Estab vs Everyone under Musharraf, PML-N vs PPP in 2008, to PML-N vs Everyone in 2013, and PML-N vs PTI in 2018.
With the PTI established as challenger, experienced horses from all over will no doubt seek to be traded into its fold. But will that be enough to beat the PML-N? As Azeema Cheema argued in her recent blog: “if the PTI aren’t winning urban Punjab yet, they are not winning any national elections in the next two and a half years”. The result from Okara supports the prognosis. Even with the trading-in of the ‘electable’ Ashraf Sohna of the PPP, the PTI was not even in the running. The PTI’s noisy urban support base does create an illusion of strength. But Election 2018 will still be largely lost and won across the vast swathes of Punjab’s countryside.
Can the PTI beat the PML-N at the PML-N’s own game, using PML-N tactics? The PML-N has mastered the politics of patronage in Punjab. It has a formidable party machine well entrenched at the grass roots. And the PML-N learns from its mistakes. The result of NA-122 will focus the PML-N on 2018 just as the PTI’s Minar-e-Pakistan rally of October 2011 focused it on 2013. Nawaz Sharif is no reformist. But he does put in just enough work to get the job done. Vilifying Nawaz Sharif might have helped Khan gather under the PTI’s flag all those already opposed to Sharif. But the hate-driven strategy won’t win over those who find Sharif acceptable or amiable.
And what political morality does Aleem Khan and Ashraf Sohna’s PTI stand for? If opting for ‘electables’ and deep pockets is the winning strategy that must also be adopted by the change-bearing PTI, is it anything more than a me-too PML-N with a celebrity leader devoid of allegations of personal financial corruption? There is a much-viewed clip from Hamid Mir’s Capital Talk that Imran Khan haters recirculate after his latest sermon on morality, where while responding to Sheikh Rasheed’s jibe on being a one-man Tonga Party, Khan’s prays for remaining a failed politician rather than becoming a success of the Sheikh variety.
The malign-PML-N strategy has brought the PTI as far as it could: into a formidable second slot where it is breathing down the ruling party’s neck in urban Punjab. To overtake the the PML-N, the PTI will need to re-imagine itself and its strategy. In the fury of the anti-PML-N storm kicked up by its container and dharna politics, no one remembers what the PTI stands for anymore. Back in 2011, Imran Khan was selling a dream about how Pakistan and Pakistanis will be significantly better off if they vote for the PTI. Being a good learner, the only politician selling the dream of a prosperous and happier Pakistan these days is Nawaz Sharif.
When was the last time anyone heard Imran Khan speak of things constructive? When was the last time he came across as a statesman capable of reforming and rejuvenating Pakistan’s institutions while working with them as opposed to being the bickering constituency politician mad at everyone? For now it seems that the PTI would only win Election 2018 if the PML-N does something stupid to lose it.
With two and a half years still to go, it isn’t too late for the PTI to go back to the drawing board. But to devise a strategy to win over those who presently vote for the PML-N, the PTI would need to first acknowledge that the PML-N is ahead.
Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu