JOIN USPakistan’s military, terrorists and muscle-power have reduced the country’s general elections to a violent and undemocratic exercise. With just over a week to go before polling day, election-related violence has soared and attacks at election rallies have claimed the lives of hundreds of people. A suicide bombing at a rally in Mastung in Baluchistan on Friday, which was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 149 people, including one of the candidates in the fray, dead and 186 others injured. The Pakistan military’s brazen meddling in the election and manipulation of institutions such as the judiciary and the Election Commission to influence the outcome has touched unprecedented levels. Its favourite to lead the next government is former cricketer and founder-leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), Imran Khan, and to this end it has weakened other parties and politicians in the fray. Leading candidates of other parties have been arbitrarily disqualified. Journalists who dare to question the military-sanctioned narrative of the election have been abducted, threatened and forced to quit journalism. Media houses that are critical of the military’s line have been taken off the air and allowed to return only after they bowed to the military’s demands. The military’s plan to marginalise the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and boost the PTI’s chances were set in motion over a year ago. It pushed the courts to convict and sentence Nawaz Sharif on charges of corruption even as Imran was let off the hook. Sharif and his daughter Maryam’s arrests on the eve of elections are no coincidence; they are aimed at decapitating the still-popular PML-N.
Even as democracy is being snuffed out, religious extremism and terrorism in Pakistan have been given another shot in the arm. Among the candidates in the fray are several terrorist leaders. While the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud Dawa/Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafeez Saeed is campaigning for the Milli Muslim League, his son and son-in-law are among 265 JuD activists contesting the national and provincial elections. So brazen is the support of Pakistan’s ‘Deep State’ to terrorism that its National Counter Terrorism Authority lifted the ban on the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and unfroze its assets to enable its leader Maulana Ahmed Ludhianvi to contest the election. By allowing terrorists to contest elections, Pakistan is conferring legitimacy on them.
The July 25 vote was slated to be a historic milestone in Pakistan’s road to democracy. It would have been only the second-ever democratic transition of power there. But the military’s manipulation of the election process and the inordinate democratic space being accorded to terrorists and extremists have rendered the elections a farce.