It’s Déjà Vu in Pakistan, as the Country Heads Toward Elections

As the axiom holds, insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. This is visible in Pakistan’s politics.

As 2023 drew to a close, Pakistan’s politics resembled a recurrent nightmare as the military establishment continued, despite an announcement to the contrary, to play political actors against each other. As a result, Pakistan’s troubled democracy remained on a knife’s edge, and its backslide in 2024 is likely to continue.

Although the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has announced that elections, which have already been delayed for eight months, will be held in February, rumors of their further postponement due to the fragile security situation have gained traction. 

Despite a massive crackdown on former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the party is still a potent political force and can throw up surprises for the military establishment if free and fair elections are held in February 2024 as currently planned. Likewise, the surge of terrorism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces has provided the establishment with another possible pretext to delay elections. These factors have kept Pakistan’s democracy in a constant spin, reinforcing political instability and uncertainty in the country.

Consistent with the cyclical pattern of Pakistan’s checkered political history, the military’s former arch-foe, three-time prime minister and the supremo of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), Nawaz Sharif, is back in the establishment’s good books. At the same time, Khan remains out of favor for political defiance. It is déjà vu in Islamabad, as the 2024 elections are allegedly being managed for Sharif as they were for Khan in 2018. 

In 2018, Sharif faced a slew of legal challenges on graft charges, while in 2023, Khan is facing 180 different cases. In hindsight, imposing Khan in 2018 by stealing the public’s mandate, which was in favor of Sharif at that time, resulted in a political and governance nightmare. Similarly, manipulating election results in 2024 to pave the way for Sharif’s return to power will be equally catastrophic. 

At any rate, irrespective of the electoral outcomes and consequences, the establishment will do anything to keep Khan out of power. Interestingly and ironically, Pakistan is not facing the same kind of pressure that the United States is bringing to bear on Bangladesh, which is being targeted and sanctioned over its tilted electoral playing field. 

However, it bears mention that Washington has conditioned the renewal of Pakistan’s next International Monetary (IMF) program with timely elections. The existing Stand-By Agreement (SBA), an emergency stopgap measure of $3 billion, will expire in March, and the IMF has warned that it will not enter new negotiations with the caretaker government, which is not constitutionally mandated to strike such deals. 

As things stand in Pakistan, the next dispensation will be the continuation of hybrid rule, a term that was popularized during Khan’s four-year tenure, where the military will have a pronounced role in governance and economic spheres.

Since assuming office in November 2022, Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir has taken it upon himself to fix Pakistan’s broken economy with mixed results. While security is his primary responsibility, he is obsessed with keeping the U.S. dollar’s exchange rate against the Pakistani rupee under a specific limit.

On the economic front, 2023 was a mixed year for Pakistan as the country was headed toward an economic default. By securing an IMF bailout package and crucial assistance from China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pakistan was able to avoid economic default and near-term risks. Since then, Pakistan’s economy has stabilized, but the challenges persist. To curtail dollar outflow, the government banned imports, which negatively impacted import-dependent industries, resulting in unemployment, inflation, and a shortage of essential commodities.  

To maintain its slow economic recovery, Pakistan will need a new IMF program in 2024 and additional aid from Beijing, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi. Despite persistent economic challenges, the IMF has forecasted that Pakistan’s economy will grow at 2.5 percent in the current fiscal year, doubling to 5 percent in the next fiscal year. However, economic growth will depend on responsible fiscal management and following the IMF guidelines.

Three significant challenges to Pakistan’s economy in 2024 will be completing the current IMF program, negotiating a new bailout package with the IMF for which elections must be held in or before March, and translating the investment pledges worth billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia and the UAE under the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), the military’s economic initiative, into a reality. If Pakistan does not manage these challenges responsibly, it may push the country toward deeper economic turmoil.

In 2024, the SIFC will emerge as the most critical institution in Pakistan, which, in practice, will be more powerful than the Parliament. In theory, the SIFC comprises the army chief and the prime minister, among others, in a bid to bolster investors’ confidence and expedite economic projects. However, in reality, the SIFC has given the economic carte balance to the military. Somewhere down the line, the military’s pronounced role in the economy is bound to create a new phase of civil-military tensions in Pakistan.  

On the security front, Pakistan’s situation deteriorated considerably in 2023, particularly in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In the two western provinces, terrorist attacks have become a near-daily occurrence as the government is struggling to maintain its writ and security. 

Frustrated by the Taliban’s inaction against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan changed its policy posture toward the Taliban in October. It decided not to support the interim regime at international forums. Pakistan also decided to expel 1.7 million “illegal” Afghan refugees on the grounds that of the 24 suicide attacks reported in Pakistan in 2023, 15 were carried out by Afghan nationals. Although this allegation does not prove the link between Pakistan-focused terrorism originating from Afghanistan and Afghan refugees, it has pushed already tense Taliban-Pakistan ties to a breaking point. 

In short, the interlocking political, economic, and security challenges will test Pakistan’s political and military leadership in 2024. Without ensuring political stability, economic recovery and the restoration of peace will remain elusive, and vice versa.