The 14th Pakistani National Assembly elections was held on February 8, 2024. Like the past, this election too, was politically engineered. Elections were held for 336 seats in the National Assembly in which a single party or coalition can government after winning at least 169 seats.
Three major political parties have been major contenders along with many regional parties. However, no single party was in a position to garner single majority, and a coalition form of government was foreseen even before elections. The three major political parties are Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) [PML-N] led by Nawaz Sharif and his family, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Asif Ali Zardari and Bilawal Bhutto and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by Imran Khan.
Before the elections, the Election Commission along with the judiciary took steps to keep PTI out of power. Imran Khan who was already in prison, was ineligible to stand for elections. Electoral authorities rejected the party’s symbol, rejected PTI candidates from standing for election and arrested senior party officials, who have been released only after they have resigned from PTI.Candidates representing PTI stood as independent and was able to get total of 93 seats in the National Assembly. In contrast, as a single political party PML-N won 75 seats and PPP came next with 54 seats without calculating the reserved seats.[i]
As the independant candidates backed by PTI had to be represented by a political party, they joined the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) to form a strong opposition to the coalition government. However, the PML-N has turned out to be the largest political party in the National Assembly, when the ECP selected 75 of its general seats, joined by 9 independent, adding 19 reserved seats for women and 4 reserved seats for minority.[ii]
After several days of debate and discussion both PML-N and PPP agreed to form a minority government with PPP supporting the coalition from outside.Shehbaz Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s brother was selected to be the Prime Minister.President of PPP, Asif Ali Zardari took over as the President of Pakistan. Though initially some of the nations in the West showed their reservation with regard to the fairness of the electoral process, but has accepted the new coalition government. China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and India have congratulated Shehbaz Sharif on his assuming office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan. US President Joe Biden wrote a letter to Prime Minister Sharif, congratulating him to form the government, looking forward working closely with the new government. This remain to be the first official communication by the US President Biden with the Pakistani leadership, after he took office in January 2021, as the US Presidential office did not make any communication with former Prime Minister Imran Khan or with Shehbaz Sharif during the interim government.
The present government faces the crucial task of rescheduling its foreign debt payment among decreasing export earnings.[iii] As per the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Pakistan has to repay foreign debt amounting to US$27.47 billion by November 2024. This repayment includes both the principal loan and interest costs.[iv] The present government experiences unforeseen economic crisis, which will remain to be a principal impediment for the present government. This is why instead of selecting Ishaq Dar or Miftah Ismail to be the Finance Minister, the government has selected Muhammad Aurangzeb to be the next Finance Minister. He has been a seasoned banker for over three decades and has served as the President and CEO of Habib Bank Limited and held key position at JP Morgan.[v]Ishaq Dar has been appointed as the Foreign Minister and Khawaja Asif as the Defence Minister. It can be noted that in the recently constituted Council of Common Interests (CCI), Foreign Minister Dar has been included instead of the Finance Minister, which shows the key role that Ishaq Dar will continue to play in advising the government in economic matters as well.
The present government is making attempts 1o garner support for the next International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic package. It remains to be the single most important factor in the country’s short-term creditworthiness,[vi] as it will further exacerbate inflation and the ongoing economic crisis, receding the political capital of the Shehbaz Sharif’s government.
To conclude one cannot expect the 14th National Assembly of Pakistan to compete its full tenure. Pakistan continues to experience political instability, economic crisis, factionalism, terrorism, ethnic centralism leading to insurgency in the provinces and many more vices, a weak PML-N coalition will find it hard to find any rapprochement to bring political stability in Pakistan.
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*Dr. Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee, Research Fellow, Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi.
The views expressed are personal.
[i] National Assembly Result, General Elections 2024, Election Commission of Pakistan, Official Website, https://www.elections.gov.pk/national-assembly, accessed on 5th March, 2024. The Election Commission has not yet been able to declare the final results and has published a provisional one. Many independent candidates has challenged the results to the judiciary and expects either the recount or re-poll on those constituencies.
[ii] Iftikhar A. Khan, "PML-N gets lucky as reserved seats doled out", Dawn, March 7, 2024, https://www.dawn.com/news/1819514/pml-n-gets-lucky-as-reserved-seats-doled-out, accessed on 7th March, 2024.
[iii] Pierre van der Eng, "Foreign debt will be Pakistan’s economic touchstone in 2024", East Asia Forum, 05 March 2024, https://eastasiaforum.org/2024/03/05/foreign-debt-will-be-pakistans-economic-touchstone-in-2024/ accessed on 7th March, 2024.
[iv] "Pakistan to repay over $27bn in foreign debt within a year", Pakistan Today, Profit, January 12, 2024, https://profit.pakistantoday.com.pk/2024/01/12/pakistan-to-repay-over-27bn-in-foreign-debt-within-a-year/ accessed on 5th March, 2024.
[v] Swati Nair, "Muhammad Aurangzeb: From Banking Giant to Pakistans Finance Minister", Good Returns, March 5, 2024, https://www.goodreturns.in/news/muhammad-aurangzeb-appointed-pakistans-new-finance-minister-gen-1334743.html accessed on 7th March, 2024.
[vi] Khurram Husain, "The creditors’ view", Dawn, March 7, 2024, https://www.dawn.com/news/1819768 , accessed on 7th March, 2024.