If Pakistan is the prize, then Punjab is the electoral battleground

Pakistan is constitutionally a federal parliamentary democracy, with a bicameral parliament comprising the directly elected lower-house National Assembly and the indirectly elected upper-house Senate. However, the national government is formed by the National Assembly only.

The country has four provinces plus the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), which together elect representatives to the National Assembly every five years. The total number of seats in National Assembly is 342.

But not all of the country’s provinces are equal in size or representation. Punjab elects more parliamentarians, 183, than the others combined — Sindh has 75, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 43, Balochistan 17, Fata 12 and Islamabad 2 — based on population. The impact of Punjab province on shaping the political landscape of Pakistani politics is, therefore, pivotal. The next general election is scheduled for summer 2018 and the outcome of the electoral battle in Punjab will decide who forms the next government.

Considering that only 13 countries in the world have a population greater than Punjab, a province of more than 110 million people, it merits a close look at who are the key political players in the province and who holds the aces in the looming electoral battle to govern Pakistan for the next five years.

Statistics about the outcomes of the previous general election in 2013 are instructive in terms of assessing current realities. Electorally and demographically, Punjab constitutes half of Pakistan. Of the 342 seats in the National Assembly, 272 are general seats for which direct elections are held, while 60 are reserved for women and 10 for non-Muslims.

In the 2013 National Assembly election, the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), the party of Nawaz Sharif, won 166 seats (126 general, 34 women, six minorities). The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of Bilawal Bhutto was a distant second with 42 seats (33 general, eight women, one minorities), while Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) came third with 35 seats (28 general, six women, one minorities).

PML-N garnered 32.7 percent of the national vote (14.8million votes), PTI 16.9 percent (7.6m votes) and PPP 15.2 percent (6.9m votes). Sharif’s party easily formed the federal government.

In the same year’s Punjab Assembly elections, PML-N won 313 of the 406 seats, thus forming a government in the province by far exceeding the simple majority of 203 seats. PTI was a distant second with 30 seats and PPP won only eight. PML-N garnered 11.3m votes in Punjab, PTI 4.9m and PPP just 2.4m.

But that was then. The 2018 general election will be the first in modern Pakistani history contested based on the performance of the three frontrunners ruling different provinces.

While PML-N and PPP have variously ruled Pakistan, Punjab, Sindh, KP and Balochistan before, PTI came to power in 2013 for the first time, in KP province only. But PML-N and PPP have only rarely governed each other’s home base, Punjab and Sindh, respectively. In 2013, for the first time the largely two-party system was shaken up as PTI became a major contender by bagging KP (PML-N and PPP have won eight of the country’s 10 elections so far), turning Pakistan’s electoral politics into a three-way race. This is expected to remain unchanged in 2018.

The battle to earn the right to govern Pakistan will therefore essentially be played out in Punjab among PML-N, PTI and PPP. While voting patterns in the most recent election show the PML-N seemingly in an invincible electoral position, the current troubles faced by the party might yet change its fortunes.

In the summer of 2017, Sharif was controversially disqualified by the Supreme Court of Pakistan as prime minister and as a member of the National Assembly, and this year unseated as head of his party as well by the same court. PML-N has never faced an election without him in an official party position.

He has been elected Punjab chief minister once and prime minister three times by dominating the province politically. His brother Shahbaz has been elected chief minister of Punjab three times and remains the current provincial chief executive. If the Supreme Court, currently seized with a case about the duration of disqualification of a convicted politician, decides to debar Sharif politically for life, Shahbaz is his likely successor as both party chief and the party’s candidate for prime minister.

In the 2013 election, both PTI and PPP combined could not get more votes or seats than PML-N in Punjab or at the national level. Imran Khan seems much better placed than Bilawal Bhutto to challenge Sharif’s near-hegemony in Punjab – but will need to increase his party’s share of National Assembly seats by a staggering five times, and a virtually impossible 10 times in Punjab, to beat PML-N, with or without Sharif at the helm, to become the next prime minister of Pakistan.

For PML-N to lose power, it will have to lose more than half of its current parliamentary share nationally, and two-thirds in Punjab. This makes PML-N difficult to dislodge electorally. As things stand, it can be prevented from ruling Punjab, and therefore Pakistan, only legally or politically through self-implosion, not electorally.

 

Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science. Twitter: @adnanrehmat1