Pakistan - Khyber Pakhtunkhwa crisis

After the failure of the All Parties Conference in which the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government had hoped to resolve the controversy surrounding the May 30th Local Government (LG) elections, the opposition went through with their strike on June 10 (yesterday). However, the strike did not gather much traction with the people of KP, despite the tripartite opposition alliance’s best efforts. There have been reports of clashes as political workers of the ANP attempted to force traders and shop owners to close down their businesses and block the roads. A partial strike was observed in some districts, yet the activities of the province were not brought to a standstill as the opposition had hoped. Given the fact that this strike seems to have fizzled out before it could even begin, the opposition will have to rethink their strategy for pressurising the KP government to resign. ANP leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain has said that the opposition parties will hold a rally on June 16 in Peshawar. At a press conference, Hussain said: “We will announce our next line of action in the rally.” It does seem however, that the opposition may have to soften their stance, given the Chief Election Commissioner’s (CEC’s) reluctance to hold fresh elections and their inability to mobilise the masses to join their campaign. It does not seem likely that the opposition will be able to convince the entire province to go on strike or even get a significant number of people to join their protests.

The proposed resignation of the KP government would mean that the provincial Assembly too would have to be re-elected, in addition to the LG. The PTI leadership and KP government realise that this controversy is a setback and that they have lost any moral high ground they may have had when they were accusing the PML-N of being complicit in widespread rigging in the 2013 general elections. PTI chairman Imran Khan has been asserting his party’s willingness to hold the elections again to save face amid the allegations of wilful rigging by his party members in the LG polls. CEC Justice Sardar Raza has commented that holding elections is not child’s play and has not agreed to nullify the results of the LG elections, but specific rigging complaints will be considered by the ECP. The CEC has also accused the police of not being vigilant enough to prevent clashes at polling stations and the mishandling of ballot boxes. In this respect, ensuring security at polling stations is the responsibility of the provincial government and PTI officials in KP cannot avoid the blame for mismanaging these elections. All of the KP government’s attempts at negotiating with the opposition have failed and the latter is not backing down from the demand that the provincial government resign and the elections be held anew under a caretaker setup. This polarisation has called into question the legitimacy of the KP local bodies elections as well as the PTI government’s continuance in office. It still remains unclear how any of the parties will proceed, in the light of the hurdles that they are facing. The ghosts of PTI’s recent past have come back to haunt it, as the opposition refuses to accept the explanation that the LG elections were merely mismanaged and not intentionally rigged — the same explanation that the PTI refused to accept after the 2013 general election. However this issue is resolved in the future, it can only be hoped that the way in which the KP LG polls have been handled, both before and after the elections, does not set a precedent for future elections. Reforms in the electoral process should be made before elections take place to ensure the credibility of election results and prevent post-polls controversies arising again and again.