The need for political legitimacy

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has finally announced the delayed elections on February 8 as the country’s moribund economy grapples with overlapping political and security crises. The polls were supposed to have taken place within 90 days of parliament’s dissolution on August 9, but the ECP delayed the exercise on the pretext of redrawing constituency boundaries after the latest digital census. The announcement of the election date came hours after an International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission started its two-week review of the nine-month, $3 billion Stand-by Arrangement bailout approved in July to help Pakistan avert an impending default. A report in The Express Tribune suggests that the election date has direct implications on the IMF programme review and also on any new deal with the Washington-based lender. The poll is unlikely to be a free and fair exercise amid extreme political polarisation with the country’s main opposition party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and its leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan having faced months of a nationwide crackdown. Since May, the top PTI leadership has been facing widespread arrests. As we have seen previously, intimidation tactics force important PTI leaders to desert the party and switch allegiance. This strategy has borne fruit, with a number of resignations and defections.