Imran Wins. Army defeated. Instability ahead in Pakistan

The general election in Pakistan is a watershed moment in its patchy democratic history. Never before have the Pakistani people defied the Army so openly by voting against the parties it supported

In the just concluded Pakistan general election, Imran Khan, the jailed leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), won despite all handicaps. The Pakistan Army and its political co-conspirators have been convincingly defeated. The attempt to somehow install a government by the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) may or may not succeed.

The general election in Pakistan is a watershed moment in its patchy democratic history. Never before have the Pakistani people defied the Pakistan Army so openly by voting against the parties it supported. Widely expected to deter the PTI's supporters from exercising their franchise, the fear and intimidation tactics of the establishment had exactly the opposite effect. PTI supporters turned the act of voting into a movement of resistance. 

Earlier, the role of the Pakistan Army in politics was only discussed in drawing rooms; it is being openly discussed on Pakistan's voluble TV channels and mainstream media. 

Whether these unprecedented developments represent a paradigm shift will become clear over the next few weeks depending on how the public responds to moves made by the Pakistan Army, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the President of Pakistan.

The Pakistan Army, having held the polity hostage for over three decades, has been forced to preach the virtues of non-partisan leadership to the political parties. Pakistan's Army chief, General Asim Munir, has urged the polarised political leadership of the country to come together in the national interest.

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The second important institution that will come under public scrutiny is the ECP. There have been many complaints against it. The most egregious are allegations that election results have been manipulated. The PTI leadership has claimed widespread discrepancies in the booth-wise results in Form 45, the document verified and supplied to the candidates by Returning Officers, and Form 47, which declares the final result and should be the sum total of all booth-wise results. 

The PTI has claimed that based on Form 45 results, the party has won 170 seats in the National Assembly – 169 are needed for an absolute majority. Other reports suggest that the discrepancies in at least 18 national assembly constituencies are so blatant that the "defeated" PTI candidates are likely to agitate against the results in various legal and election commission tribunals. The PTI leadership has instructed them to start peaceful protests in their constituencies. 

All eyes will also be on the President, who must call the individual elected as leader of the House to be the next prime minister. This can only be done after the National Assembly meets and a Speaker is elected. The National Assembly is mandated to meet within 21 days from the day of polling. This implies an outer deadline of February 29 for convening the National Assembly. Unless the President calls it earlier, there will be sufficient time for horse-trading and cobbling together coalitions as no single party has an absolute majority.

Whether such horse trading succeeds depends entirely on whether PTI-supported candidates who have won independently on different symbols can stay together. Forming the largest bloc in the National Assembly, they have three choices: to constitute themselves into a group with a new name, to join either of the two main political parties, the PMLN or the PPP, or to join another political party. Under Pakistan's Election Rules, the independents have three days from the notification of the election results to join a political party of their choice.

If the PTI independents consolidate themselves as a group with a new name, they can try for the position of Leader of the Opposition, which the Speaker may or may not agree to. However, in this way, the PTI independents will not get their share of seats from the 60 seats reserved for women and 10 for minorities because the reserved seats are distributed based on the proportion of votes polled by a party. 

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Nawaz Sharif extended a hand to them in his premature 'victory speech', saying, "We invite them to sit with us to extricate Pakistan from the crisis it faces. Our only agenda is to create a prosperous Pakistan." PPP President Bilawal Bhutto has also expressed hope that the independents would join hands with his party. The PTI-backed independents who join either party would expect ministerial portfolios or positions with perks and privileges. 

It will test the loyalty of the independents to Imran Khan and to the interim party chief chosen by him while he is in jail, Gohar Ali Khan. The voters have roundly defeated candidates who left Imran Khan to form a "King's Party" called PTI-Parliamentarians. Both Pervez Khatak and Mahmood Khan were former PTI chief ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The loaves and fishes of office may nevertheless attract some independents (one has already joined PML-N) as many who won were, in fact, dummy candidates who became official candidates supported by the PTI after the ECP disqualified the preferred candidate. 

The third option before the PTI independents is to join a third party. There is speculation that they may prefer to join Majlis Wahadat-i-Muslimeen (MWM), which has only one elected Member of the National Assembly. The PTI has worked together with the MWM in the past. This will allow it to get a share of the proportional seats reserved for women and minorities. 

However, PTI Chief Gohar Ali Khan has announced that the party would form an "alliance" with MWM. Since an alliance is not the same as a merger, it suggests that the PTI independents could "join" the PTI itself. The PTI remains a recognised national party, even if its election symbol has been removed. But it has been prevented from having a legislative presence. 

Will the Pakistan Army accept its political error and encourage the independents to rejoin their original political party, the PTI? As the largest bloc in the National Assembly, it can explore forming a coalition government. Anything short of this will mean prolonged instability in Pakistan.