Explained: What Imran Khan’s massive by-election victory means for Pakistan’s future

Imran Khan is on the comeback trail.

Already the former prime minister has called for fresh general elections in Pakistan after his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party registered an impressive showing in the crucial Punjab Assembly bypolls.

According to unofficial results so far, the PTI won 16 seats while Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of Sharif just three. An Independent candidate also won.

Imran’s win dealt a major blow to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif whose son Hamza Shehbaz is all set to lose his post as chief minister.

The election for the chief minister will be held on 22 July on the Supreme Court’s order and PTI-PMLQ joint candidate Chaudhary Parvez Elahi is likely to be the new chief minister of the politically crucial province Punjab.

On Sunday, the bypolls to 20 Assembly seats of Punjab were held in relatively a peaceful manner amid scattered incidents of violence. A heavy contingent of police was deployed in five ‘sensitive’ constituencies of Lahore and Multan.

Let’s take a closer look at what Imran’s party prevailing means for Pakistan:

Imran's anti-establishment narrative pays off

This piece in The Diplomat prior to the polls posited that the Punjab by-elections allowed the Imran Khan-led PTI its first major opportunity to test run its anti-establishment narrative at the polls.

“For months, PTI chairman Imran Khan has belligerently targeted the country’s military leadership for its alleged role in orchestrating a no-confidence vote against his government in the parliament. To this end, Khan’s party has run a brutal media campaign to not only defame the military’s leadership but also undermine the ruling coalition and its support base,” the piece said.

Imran, the piece said, has been very effective in propagating the narrative that the security establishment colluded with local politicians and foreign powers to topple his government. “This is the same narrative that Khan’s candidates have taken to voters in their campaigns in the upcoming by-elections,” the piece continued.

Well the results are in – it seems that the anti-establishment ploy paid off in spades.

Imran sitting pretty ahead of next year’s polls

Al Jazeera said Sunday's polls were seen as a litmus test regarding the popularity test of the former international cricket star as well as a bellwether for national elections that must be held by next October.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Punjab state’s main city of Lahore, said the election victory “is a huge comeback for Khan”.

“You cannot rule out the possibility that he may become the prime minister again if there are free and fair elections and if his party performs well as it has done in Punjab,” Hyder said.

Imran is thus in a prime spot ahead of next year’s polls.

Establishment gets thumbs-down from voters

On the flip side, the Pakistani political establishment’s political strategy was rejected.

As this piece in The News International ponders --- exactly what part of the security establishment’s political interventions are being rejected?

The piece states that Imran Khan and the PTI have been beneficiaries of the system’s deliberate and concerted efforts to replace the PML-N with a new political force since at least 2011 – though some may argue that project began in the late 1990s.

“For Kaptaan and his fan club, the by-election results are a repudiation of the vote of no-confidence. In short, the only thing Pindi has gotten wrong is the choice to allow for the removal of Imran Khan from the office of prime minister,” the piece continued.

The piece also takes aim at the ruling PML-N.

“Shehbaz Sharif’s three-decade track record of delivery lies in ruins on the back of three months as prime minister. Nawaz Sharif’s narrative of resisting the establishment lies in ruins on the back of an alignment with the same post-2016 regime that tarred and feathered him as a #ModiKaYaar,” the piece added.

The piece concluded that the PML-N is now not only a victim of a repudiation of the vote of no-confidence, but also of its lack of imagination and inconsistency of narrative.

Another piece in The Dawn stated that results indicate that voters didn’t take kindly to the economic and political decisions of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of  allowing the inflationary trend to continue to ward off an economic meltdown and giving its tickets to PTI ‘turncoats’.

“People had hoped that the PML-N government would provide them relief from the ‘wrong’ economic decisions taken by the PTI government. But, instead, the Shehbaz government aggravated their economic affliction by blindly following the IMF,” Dr Amjad Magsi of the South Asia Study Centre of the Punjab University, told the newspaper.

“The present rulers popularised Imran Khan’s narrative by taking the anti-masses, unpopular decisions and that too after weeks of confusion and reluctance that accelerated the economic meltdown. Politically, it was more suited for them to go for new elections soon after Khan’s ouster from power rather than owning the unpopular decisions of the last PTI government,” he explained.

Imran calls for resignation of CEC

PTI Imran Khan in a tweet on Sunday thanked party workers and voters of Punjab for defeating, what he called, not just PML-N candidates, but the entire state machinery, especially harassment by police and a “totally biased” Election Commission of Pakistan.

The PTI chief claimed that the CEC tried his best to turn the polls in favour of Shehbaz Sharif’s PML-N.

“I am disappointed in the chief election commissioner. How could he let all this happen? He is not competent to run [the Election Commission of Pakistan] and is biased towards a political party. Raja should immediately resign.”

Imran went on to add that despite several cases of rigging during polls being brought before the CEC, he never punished anyone, which encouraged malpractice as no one feared accountability. But Imran said: “We won as people came out to cast their votes like never before.”

He also thanked the PTI allies — PML-Q, Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM) and Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC).

“The only way forward from here is to hold fair and free elections under a credible ECP. Any other path will only lead to greater political uncertainty and further economic chaos,” Imran, who was ousted as prime minister in April after he lost a confidence vote in Parliament, said.

PTI party’s senior leader Asad Umar said Khan would announce the party strategy after a meeting of the core committee on Monday.

He said now the PML-N is left with only one option and that is “immediately calling for fresh general elections.”

‘Respect mandate of people’

The ruling PML-N of the Sharifs has accepted its defeat and even congratulated PTI Chairman Khan for a ‘landslide victory’ in the by-polls.

“We respect the mandate of the people. Now we ask the PTI-PMLQ to form the government in Punjab,” the Prime Minister’s spokesperson Malik Ahmad Khan told PTI.

To a question about whether Prime Minister Shehbaz would dissolve the National Assembly to call early general elections, he said: “The PML-N leadership will decide about it in consultation with its allies.”

PML-N vice president Maryam Nawaz also accepted her party’s defeat. “We should accept our defeat with an open heart,” the daughter of PML-N supreme leader Nawaz Sharif said in a tweet.

She said that in politics, victory and defeat are a part of the game. “We will see our weaknesses and remove them,” she said.