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Friday March 29, 2024

PTI elections – between the cup and the lip

By Zaigham Khan
May 09, 2016

“Suppose I form a party. Where would I get the money from? If I get money, I would have to repay people. That again is wrong since I would be obliged to others.”

This is how Imran Khan explained to me his reason for not forming a party, a year before he founded the PTI. Has that paradox finally caught up with him as the much-trumpeted intraparty elections have been postponed, apparently due to the factional fighting between the ‘Ideological Group’ and the faction these ideologues have named the ‘Billionaire Group’. For many outside observers, the money bags have already won the battle for the soul of the PTI. In this article, I want to look at the party’s efforts to introduce intraparty democracy and some of the internal dynamics of the party revealed in the process.

Intra-party elections were one of the big ticket change items promised by Imran Khan. According to him, other parties could not deliver democracy because they were ‘owned’ by individuals and families and did not have internal democratic structures. He promised to make the PTI a model of democracy where card carrying members would elect their leaders and where there would be no scope for “dynastic politics”. So far, the efforts made to deliver on this promise have backfired badly, revealing that the PTI, after two decades of its inception, is as much a one-man show as Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N or Sheikh Rashid’s Awami Muslim League.

Pakistan’s other two major political parties, the PPP and the PML-N, have no internal democracy and have a very weak organisation structure. It was due to these weaknesses that Asif Zardai was able to take the helm of the PPP so easily and cause the massive shipwreck.

The situation of the PML-N is even worse. According to a recent report by Pildat, “The PML-N has the weakest internal democracy in comparison to the other seven (major) political parties…Party elections are overdue since July 2015 but there are no signs or preparations visible for fresh intra-party elections….The Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the party has not met even once in the past two and a half years and the National Council has not met since July 2011. Major policy decisions taken by the party in 2015 came around without any institutional consultation.”

Political parties everywhere are formed by charismatic individuals and overtime they turn into enduring institutions. The PTI is no exception. Much like the PPP under Z A Bhutto, the PTI relies on charisma of an individual leader. Imran Khan is arguably the most charismatic Pakistani alive. His charisma is based on his physical appeal and his sports achievements tied to his physical attraction; his contribution to philanthropy in the form of the Shaukat Khanum Hospital and his reputation as an honest and upright person. The whole party is centred around the personality cult of Imran Khan. Imran Khan is the PTI and the PTI is Imran Khan. For his young followers, he is an infallible deity who alone can deliver Pakistan from its problems.

While no major political party can be formed without such a charismatic founder, what a nation really needs is political institutions, not gods and goddesses. For longstanding contribution to democracy and for their own survival, political parties must take the democratic route. The PTI needs institutionalisation more desperately and more urgently because of Imran Khan’s age and the fact that his two sons may not like to leave their comfortable lives as members of the British aristocracy to take over from their father. The PTI also needs internal democracy because there is a strong demand for such institutionalisation from its educated middle-class voters.

The PTI, much like the PPP, is a child of social change. According to Philip E Jones, the “rise of the PPP should be seen contextually in the emergence of ‘participant society’ in Punjab. The growth of cities, rural to urban migration, rural population growth and economic stress in traditional village, the spread of literacy, the growing complexity of society and the economy, the emergence of new social and economic interest groups, the impact of the September War with India in 1965 were all forces that affected political and social identities, undermined parochial ties, and forged new loyalties to a political party, namely PPP.”

While the PPP has its roots in the age of socialism, the PTI was born in the lap of the new liberal economy; while ideologies ruled the 1960s and the 1970s, identities are the source of passion in the 2000s. The growth in the economy has created new wealth and widened the base of the well-off urban middle class. These sections of society want to assert themselves in the power arena and want a better deal for themselves. The PPP now represents old money, the PML-N represents new and uneducated money, and the PTI represents new and educated money.

It is people like Jahangir Khan Tareen and Aleem Khan, called ATM derogatorily, who are the jet engines of the party. Many of them, like Imran Khan himself, are children of government servants, who, through their hard work, dedication and honesty, made it possible for their children to become businessmen and politicians. In front of these educated and charismatic entrepreneurs, old wealth and status symbolised by people like Shah Mahmood Qureshi – leader of the ‘Ideological Group’ – do not stand much of a chance in the party.

The powerful middle-class segment of the party aspires for a democratic structure. The idealist Imran Khan could not agree more, but the pragmatist Khan soon took charge and made a U-turn. This seesaw has created quite a spectacle for mischievous onlookers.

The PTI admits that the first intra-party elections held in 2013 were staggeringly flawed. Perhaps, these elections were far more flawed than the national elections against which the party staged a prolonged dharna in Islamabad, though the party must be given credit for holding the largest intra-party election from the general electoral base. The most serious allegations, borne out by the investigations carried out by Justice Wajihuddin Ahmed, related to the use of money to influence the outcome of these elections.

Justice Wajihuddin pointed the finger at some top PTI leaders who happen to be closest to the chairman and held them responsible for massive rigging. He recommended that they be thrown out of the party. However, poor Wajihuddin had to face the kind of treatment a lover receives from his beloved in Mirza Ghalib’s poetry – he was promptly thrown out of Bani Gala.

The new attempts to democratise the PTI have proved even more fractious. Tasneem Noorani, who was made the chief election commissioner with much fanfare, left his post saying that some people had convinced Imran Khan to confine elections to the post of the chair while the chair himself should nominate holders of all other positions. Noorani considered it a travesty of intraparty democracy and we may not hear from him again.

Both Wajihuddin and Noorani were caught in the crossfire in the battle between the idealist Khan and the pragmatist Khan. This battle may never end but it is not very hard to guess which of the two has all the mojo.

The writer is a social anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan