You’ve got to give full marks to Imran Khan for ambition. He has been making what have all along been considered tall claims, if not downright naivety, in the Pakistani political context by his rivals — making his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf a national party with wide appeal in all four provinces (when even the likes of Awami National Party, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema Islam couldn’t do it), launching and succeeding in a membership drive that snaps up over a million active members, wooing the largest chunk of young adults in the country as supporters, winning the endorsement of the otherwise cynical and apolitical professional classes, conducting the most exhaustive (and impressive) in-house elections ever by a Pakistani party, and snapping up the mantle of the ‘third force’ on the national political landscape.
It is a testament to his self-belief and single-minded perseverance that he has managed to convert all these promises into a stark reality. And more: he has held two among the largest public party meetings by any party in Pakistan’s political history, become a contender for prime minister, and is striking cold fear in the heart of his principal political rival, Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, which fancies its chances of being in power, and which stands to lose the greatest with the rise of PTI.
If Sharif had any doubts that the best of Imran Khan was behind him, he has surely been proven wrong with the Minar-e-Pakistan jalsa Mark-II right in his home ground. In the process, PTI has shed the ‘also ran’ tag that many a detractor has insisted defines Imran Khan’s political status.
Was this the comeback that rolls out the ‘power play’ round of politics in the drawdown to the March 11 elections that will help Imran Khan bring to fruition his remaining promises: leading his party to a strong showing at the hustings, staging a new innings in parliament and provincial legislatures and — in a best case scenario for him — actually become prime minister?
At the least, the 23rd March ‘Tsunami Plus’ jalsa brings the party back into the game after a hiatus of public muscle flexing during which Imran Khan was overseeing the astonishing feat of conducting in-house elections of thousands of office bearers.
Between the October 2011 game-changing jalsa and the March 2013 game-setting jalsa, PTI arguably lost both momentum and ground — a period that saw its principal rival PML-N snap up dozens of “electables” from rival parties including the Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League-Q, Awami National Party and even Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf itself and thereby, creating the impression that the route to power in Islamabad goes through Lahore.
Additionally, this was also the period in which someone called Tahirul Qadri out of nowhere mounted his own version of a ‘tsunami jalsa’ in Islamabad, stealing Imran Khan’s agenda, rhetoric and thunder.
But Imran Khan is definitely back in the game with the March 23rd show not only the first political rally after the election schedule was announced but may also be the one to beat until the elections are held. The swelling ranks of his party cadres are fresh from the net practice of intra-party polls grassroots mobilization and ready to give chase to detractors by building the momentum needed to mobilize supporters ahead of March 11.
The pressure on the Sharifs is immense to match if not outdo the size and sizzle of Imran Khan’s latest Lahore showing. If this does not happen, the Sharifs will lose political face and hurt their chances.
While it remains to be seen if Imran Khan can manage to deliver on his remaining promises to sweep the polls and form a PTI government, it is going to be a Herculean project. For, Pakistan has not a proportional representation (PR) system but a first-past-the-post electoral system that rewards only one winner per constituency.
If there were a PR system in the country, PTI would have been the third biggest party in the National Assembly resulting from the last general election it contested in 2002 instead of only the single seat that Imran Khan won from Mianwali. And it could arguably snap up a third of all the seats in parliament if the March 11 elections were under the PR system. But it is not.
This means Imran Khan has to first translate his popular support into votes, then the votes into parliamentary seats and the seats into a simple-majority coalition before he can realize his dream of forming a tsunami government.
This is the route that PML-N and PPP have taken and that has delivered a government for them in seven out of the eight party-based elections held in Pakistan’s history — two for the former (1990 and 1997) and five for the latter (1971, 1977, 1988, 1993 and 2008).
Even if PTI scores the highest numbers of votes it won’t necessarily give it a parliamentary majority for if that were the case, PPP would have formed a government seven out of eight times.
Even the highest number of seats by a single party in legislature does not guarantee government, a simple majority does. If Imran Khan wants to be the prime minister, PTI has to either win at least 172 seats in National Assembly or needs to cobble together this minimum number of seats with other parties. It’s not that a single party has not won a simple majority before — PPP has done it twice (1971, 1977), the PML-N once (1997) and PML-Q once (albeit only after the 18 members of PPP were forced away as “Patriots Group” by General Musharraf).
The solo-minded Imran Khan reckons he can do it too but so far only his supporters believe him, not analysts and political scientists.
But the tsunami-esque sweep at the hustings that Imran Khan believes he can conjure can only come if two things happen — that Punjab votes on the basis of PPP’s performance at the federal level rather than PML-N’s at the provincial level, or the usually reliable pro-PPP vote bank shatters for the first time in a major way, opting for PTI rather than PML-N.
Both outcomes seem rather unlikely going by the trends of the past six elections. The vote bank is still characterized by its largely pro-PPP and anti-PPP divide.
For Imran Khan, the natural primary constituency — other than his own young growing vote bank — is to first mop up as much of the anti-PPP votes as possible. This includes past supporters of PML-N, PML-Q, JI and JUI. Imran Khan knows this, which is why his political rhetoric is increasingly becoming more religious, conservative, and firmly “right of right of-centre” to target them. He doesn’t even make an effort to woo the pro-PPP voters.
While it is foolish to underestimate Imran Khan anymore, it may so be that he is overestimating his chances of sweeping the elections. Being ambitious, as he is wont to, is not a bad thing but the grand challenge for him is beating himself at his own game — after all, he has been in politics for nearly two decades now without ever leading Pakistan from inside parliament.
The writer is a media development specialist and analyst. He heads Intermedia, a media support NGO.
