Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan’s national elections: What lies ahead?
In even less than a year, the national elections of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are to be held. The voters of these three countries will decide who will remain in power for the next five years. The first election among these will be held in Pakistan. Pakistan’s National Assembly election is to be held in November.
Our Jatiya Sangsad (national parliament) election is scheduled for either the end of December this year or the start of January next year. Finally, the Indian Lok Sabha election is to be held in May 2024.
There are two more critical elections in the pipeline for next year. On 7 May 2024, the Russian presidential election is to be held. And on 5 November of the same year, the fate of America’s President Biden will be decided.
For the time being, we will not lose sweat over the two superpowers, but swivel our attention towards this subcontinent. These three countries have inherited the British parliamentary legacy and have accepted it as their political system. In other words, people’s representatives will be elected and they will decide upon the next prime minister.
Though they may have inherited the same legacy, the context of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are absolutely different from each other. The only common factor is that tensions run high during the elections. But those tensions too are different in nature.
Take Pakistan for example. Pakistan is perhaps the only country in the world where no prime minister has been able to complete a full five-year term. It is irrelevant to question why no one could complete the full term in a country that has long been ruled by the military. The bottom line is what the army officers in Rawalpindi want. When they bid adieu to Nawaz Sharif in 2018, they felt that Imran the Pathan would be a safe bet. But they hadn’t imagined that Khan sahib would turn so recalcitrant once entrenched in power!
Before the end of his term, the army officers didn’t just oust him from office but even prepared to put him behind bars. There remain doubts as to whether Imran Khan or his party will even be able to contest in the November election.
The Pindi military officials are rather relieved that most of the other parties, particularly the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League — Nawaz (PML-N) are united in their opposition to Imran. And Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has announced that he will resign on 14 August, Pakistan’s Independence Day, and hand over power to the caretaker government. That may dispense with the immediate problem, but then who will be the head of the caretaker government? Shahbaz has still been unable to reach a consensus with the government’s major ally PPP in this regard.
Then there is pressure from the army's top brass to send Imran Khan to prison and keep his party (Tehreek-e-Insaf) at arm’s length from the election arena. All said and done, Imran and his party are way ahead of the others in popularity. With how the army officers are giving him an elevated status, it isn’t surprising if Imran Khan says becoming prime minister is much easier than winning the World Cup. So it is difficult to say that Shahbaz or his government’s allies are happily basking in power. A hungry tiger is also on the lookout for prey. It is hard to say who will be gobbled up next.
Meanwhile, the country’s economy is afflicted with cancer. How long can it survive on assistance from IMF, China, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, is a million-dollar question.
With the value of the dollar spiraling, over the past year and a half, the wealth of cash-rich people has halved. So there is no good news for whoever wins the election in November, other than being able to sit in the seat of power.
As for our national parliamentary polls, there are still five months left. The political arena is always warming up. It is not only the two major parties, but the small and medium parties and organizations that are in the field too. So the games, and counter games, are on and politics is vibrant all over again.
Foreign countries this time have been showing intense interest in our election, quite well in advance. The government sees this as an intrusion into our domestic affairs. On the whole, the politics of the coming days will keep this vibrant spirit alive. This is good news for those in this profession and for the country too. Political excitement is an essential component of a democratic trend.
Apart from this excitement is the debate over whether to hold the election under a party government or a non-party one. Many theoretical questions which have arisen on this topic, may have escaped the eye, lost in the vortex of this debate. They are just worried about the agitation and clashes on the streets.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that the democratic system has been in place in America for almost 400 years now, but just three years ago the fanatic followers of the defeated President Trump occupied Capitol Hill. Many members of Congress and the Senate had to hide to save their lives. Trump’s supporters even made off with the belongings of the US Congress Speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi, and her laptop too. This was an unprecedented incident in America. America’s politicians surely took a lesson from this. But that incident didn’t bring democracy to a halt. Therein lies the beauty of democracy. There are discussions and movements, and they all converge at one point, not stretch on endlessly like railway tracks.
The debate over party government or neutral government has sparked many recommendations. Some suggest resolving this crisis by having a bicameral parliament, where the upper house will always be active, as seen all over the world. Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan inherited a Westminster-style government and election framework from British rule. The biggest weakness of this system is that in a multi-party election, a candidate can win even securing less than 50 percent of the votes. A party can come to power by being the majority, winning only 30 to 40 percent of the votes. And once it wins, it can remain firmly in power for five years, not bothering an iota about the opposition.
As an alternative, some recommend determining the number of seats by proportional representation. Proportional representation exists in 65 percent of the countries of the world where the governments are elected by the votes of the people. In this manner, even the smallest parties get the chance to be represented in Parliament. In this system, the legislature is strengthened and so is democracy. Then again, some say if the proportionate representation cannot be carried out entirely, at least half can be done, as in neighboring Nepal.
Other than the excitement on the streets, these theoretical discussions on government systems are also rewarding. One must keep in mind that practical structures are built upon theoretical discourse. So no matter how must excitement is generated on the streets today, there is no cause to be disturbed or alarmed. Non-violent agitation can be welcomed to dispel the lack of politics.
In this subcontinent, till now the democratic system has gained permanent footing only in India. That is why it was a model for its neighbors. But the changes that have come about over the last decade have caused concern for the democratic system there. On the flip side, there is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s singular popularity. He is far ahead of all the others in this race. So if BJP rides to power once again on Modi’s shoulders, then Congress and all the other opposition parties must consider themselves a failure.
It is not that the opposition hasn’t learned their lesson from their defeat in the last two Lok Sabha elections. Among the opposition, this time Congress is the most accommodative. Under Congress's initiative a new alliance, India National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) has been launched. Congress has said that they have no preconditions that the prime minister must be from that party. So the others in the 26-party alliance are in a comfort zone. At the same time, they also realize that there is no alternative to Congress to topple BJP from power.
How the parties of the INDIA alliance united over the Manipur incident and disrupted the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sessions must indeed have instilled even a little degree of fear in Modi. The opposition has raised a no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha. Knowing full well that this motion will not come through, they still went ahead with it so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will at least stand up and say something in parliament about Manipur, which can be used in the future.
Alongside being in the central government, BJP is in power in Manipur too. As a result, ethnic violence there has become a thorn in the party’s flesh. They are trying to keep Modi at a distance and resolve the problems there under the leadership of home minister Amit Shah.
BJP wants the 2024 Lok Sabha election to be like the past two elections — the tussle of Modi versus Rahul. But unwilling to step into this trap, Sonia Gandhi and her offspring have made Dalit leader Mallikarjun Kharge the party president.
After 1984, that is, the past 39 years or so, no one in the Gandhi clan became prime minister. But even so, BJP continues to accuse the family of dynastic rule. It was to defuse such allegations that Rahul first stepped down from the post of party president. Now he has said no one in the party aspires to be prime minister. And so now the Modi-Rahul faceoff has been diverted to Modi-Kharge. As a result, while BJP easily fired personal salvos at Rahul, they will find it difficult to malign Kharge. As it is, BJP is quite at ill ease facing allegations of oppressing people of the Dalit community in various areas of the country.
The past two Lok Sabha elections of the country prove that the people there vote with different considerations for the central elections and the state elections. This goes in favour of the BJP and against the opposition. The success of the INDIA alliance, particularly in the Hindi-speaking states, depends much on how they can overcome this hindrance. If they fail to do so, then Narendra Modi will become prime minister once again, and break the record of Congress forefather Jawaharlal Nehru’s unbroken tenure in power. And then Congress and its companions will have to silently accept the New India narrative of Narendra Modi.
* Selim Khan: Executive Editor, Digital Media, Independent Television
