Daily Times

What is happening in Islamabad has a very ignominious precedent in 1977’s Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) agitation. Then too Pakistan was in transition as it is today. The PPP had won the elections but there were allegations of rigging by the PNA, a multi-party electoral alliance. However, that ended with General Ziaul Haq torpedoing the dialogue between the PPP and PNA, and taking over the reins of power. Consequently, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was led to the gallows.

The PTI, however, right or wrong, sensed a 1977-like opportunity but with one difference: the strategists in PTI calculated that the situation in 2014 is not conducive for a military takeover. This calculation is probably based on two factors. First is the assumption that the judiciary in Pakistan is no longer going to endorse a military coup and, second, that the international community is not going to support a military coup. Therefore, Imran Khan and company thought that the result in 2014 would be that the government would agree to fresh elections.

What is the basis of PTI’s claim? It says that bogus votes were cast but, more importantly, that magnetic ink was not uniformly used leading to “unverified votes” because thumb verification was impossible. Speaking on Thursday, Imran Khan asked the US what it would have done if this were the case in the US elections. According to the PTI chief, the Supreme Court (SC) there would have thrown out that election. Unfortunately, this is not true. As a student in the US, I campaigned for Albert Gore Jr’s presidential bid in the 2000 elections and saw very closely the disappointment that Democrats felt at the time over how it ultimately was decided.

For those readers who are unfamiliar with the facts of “Bush versus Gore”, the issue pertained to a mandatory recount in Florida given the difference in popular vote was minuscule. The Gore campaign had asked for a manual recount in three counties. One issue that was raised at the time was of dimpled chads and hanging chads, i.e. perforations on the voting cards that were not completed by the voter. There were other irregularities as well such as some African-American voters being disenfranchised despite not being convicted felons (or allegedly in certain cases had their permanent records tampered with) and, most hilariously, the case of a number of senior citizens in Palm Beach County mistakenly casting their ballots for Pat Buchanan, a maverick ultra-right wing presidential candidate, because of the notorious “butterfly ballot”. The governor of Florida was Jeb Bush, George W’s brother. His appointee, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was in an unusual and indecent hurry to “certify” the election for George W Bush. Some counties had sued for an extension in the recount dates. Ultimately, the Florida SC decided that the manual recount would continue. Ultimately, the Bush team moved the US SC that, in a controversial decision — a decision that the justices laid down could not be used as precedent — stopped the recount. The SC decision (5 to 4) was a travesty of justice brought about entirely because of those justices who had been appointed by Republican administrations. If there was ever a stolen election it was this and all because the SC was divided along partisan lines.

Yet what did Gore do? It is important to bear in mind that Gore’s case was much stronger than Imran Khan’s today. The recounts that continued were gradually stripping Bush of his lead in Florida and, in all likelihood, would have led to Gore winning Florida. Nationwide, Gore had more than half a million more votes than Bush. Yet Gore, while disagreeing with the SC decision vociferously, decided to concede. He did so because he felt that whatever injustice had been done to him, upholding the constitution of the US was more important. He did not want to create a constitutional crisis. There was no civil disobedience and no move to overthrow the Bush administration or force Bush to resign. Instead, Gore said repeatedly that George W Bush was his president.

Not only is Imran Khan’s case much weaker than Gore’s in principle, Imran Khan has, through this march and the subsequent civil disobedience, weakened Pakistan’s fragile democratic system irreparably. Why did a party whose rise was by any standards meteoric resort to such political madness and desperation? The answer lies in the PTI itself. First and foremost is Imran Khan himself who has shown himself to be utterly devoid of statesmanship and foresight, owing to a narcissistic self-belief that equates Pakistan’s survival to his ascendancy to power. Second is the impatience of those around him. Jahangir Tareen, as a prudent businessman, is perhaps looking at his considerable monetary investment in the PTI as a sinking one. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who had the opportunity not long ago of joining the PML-N, now is desperate to taste power. The list goes on. Third is the voter base of the PTI, the urban middle classes of Punjab that are especially unhappy. Having come out to vote for the first time, the ‘burgers’ or more accurately “burghers” are not willing to take no for an answer. Consequently, all three things have come together to author a most unfortunate script both for the country and the PTI.

This does not end well for anyone. The ultimate losers, no matter what the result, are the people of Pakistan.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com