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WRITING on these very pages around three weeks ago, Tahir Mehdi highlighted the resurgence of strong independent candidates on Pakistan’s electoral landscape. In the 2013 general election, there were close to 3,000 independent candidates, twice as many as in the preceding two elections combined, and their vote share in Punjab alone was close to six million. This was, as mentioned by Tahir Mehdi in his piece, nearly a million more than the PML-N’s main, organised competitor in the province, the PTI. In the same vein, this trend was visible in last month’s by-election in Okara, and remains pronounced in the preliminary results of the first two phases of local government elections in Punjab.
In the first phase of the province’s local government elections, the PML-N won approximately 45pc of the contested seats, while independent candidates came a close second with 38pc. In Lahore, independent candidates were able to secure twice the number of seats compared to the organisationally entrenched PTI. In total, out of nearly 2,700 seats up for grabs, there was a difference of only 150 seats between the PML-N and various independent panels.
Based on available results of the second phase, it appears independent candidates have actually won more seats in certain district councils such as Khanewal and Hafizabad, compared to the ruling party. Overall, at the time of writing, the difference in seats won between the PML-N and independents was about 140. The PTI remains a distant third with only 12pc of the total contested seats.
It appears independent candidates have actually won more seats in certain district councils such as Khanewal and Hafizabad, compared to the ruling party.
This particular reality is less pronounced in other parts of the country, such as Sindh. In the two phases held in that province so far, independent candidates were able to secure only 10-15pc of the total seats available, compared to the PPP’s 70-75pc. Thus this compels us to ask what is it about Punjab’s political economy, and its history, that provides so much space to independent candidates?
Before proceeding further, it bears mentioning that on many local government seats, either the contest is said to be ‘internal’, ie both pay some allegiance to the same party (with the competitor having been shunned in the ticket awarding process), or the party chose not to award a ticket to anyone and left the field ‘open’. What this means is that there are thousands of political operators who have the economic and social resources to contest elections, and in some instances, emerge victorious. More importantly, it also implies that party identification — which may compel a voter to assign greater importance to the ticket compared to other social determinants — is nonexistent in rural areas.
This is a function of both how political parties and politicians have evolved in Punjab and their relationship with various dictatorial regimes in the past. Since the late 1970s — when the PPP moved away from organisational politics in rural and peri-urban areas — the basic breeding ground for politicians and political operators has been local government elections. These have almost always taken place under military regimes, and were carried out with the explicit purpose of adding a layer of social legitimacy and support from below to what is otherwise an authoritarian government.
Some of these individuals, whether they first came to the fore in Ayub Khan’s Basic Democracies system, or in Zia or Musharraf’s LG system, eventually graduate to provincial and national politics, but their modus operandi remains the same. Proximity to state resources and the ability to hand out patronage is the most prominent characteristic of their politics. They need the state’s resources to survive electorally in the long run, and stints close to or in office allow them to sustain their social prominence.
Given several iterations of such elections in the past three decades, there exists a sizeable pool of aspirants who want to remain within touching distance of state power, and we see that pool now entering the fray in big numbers through the current local government exercise.
This explains one half of the equation, ie the candidate pool and their political resources. The other half is political parties, which to this day remain badly organised and in many instances beholden to powerful local operators.
During wave elections — ie those that take place immediately after or during a political movement (such as in 2008) — party identification captures the voters’ imagination more forcefully because of the national nature of politics around this time, and we see ticket-holding candidates do much better against powerful independents than they would otherwise. However, within the space of a couple of cycles, we see a reversion to the mean.
Parties thus face two options — they can either invest in local organisations that would endow them with internal social and political resources, and thus increase the value of the party ticket, or they could engage in the courtship of state-power-hungry independents. Since 1985, all parties have pursued some variant of the latter strategy, due to a number of expedient and structural reasons. As a result, now when parties even do nominally give out a ticket, that ticket holds little to no meaning in the eyes of the voter. It’s a particularly sub-optimal cycle, and one that appears to be very difficult to break.
Perhaps the most damaging consequence of allowing space for independents, and then courting them, is that it provides no insurance against factionalism, and breakaways. If, for example, an extra-constitutional adventure was undertaken in the next couple of years, most of these independent strongmen would just as easily move camps, as they have done on many previous occasions.
One would think parties that have suffered this ignominy before, like the PML-N, may be more mindful of investing in party structures. However, going by current trends, it appears the lesson hasn’t really been learnt.
The writer teaches politics at Lums.
Twitter: @umairjav
Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2015
