Daily Times

Three religious groups — from different schools of thought — have expressed willingness to contest next general elections in the country. Two of them have already fielded independent candidates in the NA-120 by-poll to test the waters, as the issue of their registration with the Election Commission of Pakistan remains unsettled for now. The third — Pakistan Ulema Council — has just recently announced its intention to contest the elections.

How does this change the electoral dynamics in the country?

NA-120 result has confirmed that the extreme right has on average no more than about five and 10 percent vote bank in cities across the country. But the election outcome has also showed that — given the electoral system continues unaffected — there is hardly any worry for this share to swell further.

The reasons are primarily political but also economic. In urban areas, mainstream parties have organisational structures that have over the years enabled their leaders to strengthen their ties with constituents in return for making state institutions deliver goods and services needed for continuance of everyday life without much turmoil. Similar patron-client relations dictate the logic of electoral politics in vast swathes of rural and suburban Pakistan. The key difference being that electables or constituency-level politicians serve as patrons, instead of party organisations. This makes it hard for new comers to attract voters without investing in effective organisations or building movements around socio-economic issues of the electorate.

A vast segment of the country’s population harbours extreme and intolerant disposition on issues like blasphemy and the Ahmadi community’s rights. But not all of these Pakistanis seem convinced to enter electoral politics on these singular issues alone

Take the PTI as an example: it could only win one national assembly and a provincial assembly seat from Lahore in 2013 despite all the hue and cry surrounding its tabdeeli slogan. The protest politics on rigging allegations between 2013 and now has enabled the party to shorten the PML-N’s winning margins and convert what were strongholds in 2008 and fairly safe seats in 2013 into competitive constituencies ahead of 2018. But the crucial factor in this has been the PTI leader’s persistent campaigning against the ruling party and the Sharif family on the issue of corruption. The issue resonates with vast segments of the urban middle class professionals and its deployment by the PTI has been a factor in bringing many more voters to polling stations in Lahore and other cities in 2013 compared to previous elections.

Among the two new entrants, only the Jamaatud Dawa’s political wing has expansive organisational structure that allows it to dispense goods and services in areas where state institutions remain either absent or ineffective. But importantly, this structure has been serving as a substitute or a complement to the state. It does not, and is unlikely to, enable the JuD leaders to serve as intermediaries between state institutions and the electorate — a task performed fairly easily by mainstream parties and electables. This leaves the JuD with only the work its philanthropic wing [Falah Insaniyat Foundation] has done to canvas for votes. It is extremely unlikely that this charity work alone will enable the JuD men and women to achieve anything similar to what PTI has achieved between 2007-08 and 2017 in just a year.

It will be even more difficult for the barelwi party — Labaik Ya Rasoolullah (LYR). First, it does not have anything even remotely close to the JuD’s organisational structure. Second, its political imagination remains confined to a singular issue that does not resonate much with material conditions of the electorate. And thirdly, LYR needs to be seen as just one among several organised expressions of barelwi school of thought. And there is hardly any evidence to suggest that LYR is dominant among these tendencies. The established clerics and their seminaries and organisations have been active in electoral politics all along under the Jamiat Ulema Pakistan banner. They’ve either contested elections on their own or have allied with mainstream parties like the PML-N. It is the upstarts like Khadim Rizvi and Ashraf Jalali who have turned towards electoral politics following the mobilisation done over confessed assassin Mumtaz Qadri’s conviction and death sentence. This still leaves barelwis associated with missionary organisations like Dawaat-e-Islami and those with the lucrative economy around mehfil-e-sama and mehfil-e-naat. In his speeches during NA-120 campaign, LYR leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi made it a point to denounce this particular expression of barelwi thought. He made passionate statements against those [barelwis] ‘whose love for the prophet was limited only to naat recited for monetary compensation’.

The PUC’s organisational strength derives from its network of mosques and madrassas. This network is useful mostly for expressing street strength and has not been used to manage electoral campaigns. Additionally, the PUC is a coalition of clerics from multiple schools of thought and its concerns have mostly been related to foreign affairs and keeping the public opinion in favour of the Saudi monarchy.

Finally, if allowed to contest elections, all three of these parties are likely to design their campaigns around anti-India and possibly also anti-US slogans with frequent references to persecuted Muslim groups in the Middle Eastern region and Myanmar. There will be frequent references to an imagined liberal lobby out to reform blasphemy laws. This rhetoric has been deployed in electoral politics of this country time and again but, purely on its own, it has never delivered much in terms of election victories. The other contributing factors are related to secular concerns of the electorate and the three parties appear unlikely to present themselves as viable options for settling those concerns.

None of the foregoing is to deny the fairly obvious fact that a vast segment of the country’s population harbours extreme and intolerant disposition on issues like blasphemy laws and Ahmadi community’s rights. But not all of these Pakistanis seem anywhere remotely convinced to enter electoral politics on these singular issues alone. Additionally, intolerance is a social problem requiring political solutions that can pave the way for a pluralist society. These solutions will come out of measures like re-imagination of the education system such that critical thought is encouraged and an empirically correct reading of national history is promoted. Other measures will involve dismantling of militant factions of religious or political parties and the twin processes of reinstating the monopoly of state institutions over means of violence as well as — the more difficult and important task — ensuring perfect oversight of the executive agencies equipped with these means by institutions that represent the will of the Pakistani people.

This agenda against intolerance and for pluralism will necessarily mean that the electoral arena cannot be opened to those canvassing in the name of confessed assassins sentenced to death by a court of law or those accused of crimes against humanity. But this standard should also be extended to those canvassing for former military dictators. For if Qadri and Hafiz Saeed have violated domestic and international laws, the latter have abrogated the country’s Constitution. And their interventions in affairs not meant for them have directly contributed to the social problem of intolerance that has produced men like Qadri and Saeed.

So the debate on the issue should not be about banning or allowing these groups to contest elections. It should, instead, be about the standards to be met by any group — religious or otherwise — with electoral ambitions.

The writer is a journalist and a researcher based in Lahore. He can be reached at umair.rasheed@lums.edu.pk

Published in Daily Times, September 28^th 2017.