[While the national politics are being sorted out, Mr. Khan’s party has opened a second front in Punjab, the nation’s richest and most populous province, home to the cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi and more than half of Pakistan’s 200 million people.]
By
Jeffrey Gettleman and Daniyal Hassan
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Imran
Khan, leader of the Pakistan Movement for Justice, after voting in Islamabad
last Wednesday.
Though his party won the election, he still needs help forming a
majority
coalition. Credit Anjum Naveed/Associated Press
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ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan — It has been a
difficult few days for the party that used to run Pakistan.
First, the party, the Pakistan Muslim
League-Nawaz, known as the P.M.L.-N., came a distant second in the national
election last Wednesday, winning about half as many parliamentary seats as the
party headed by Imran Khan, a former cricket star.
Then Nawaz Sharif, the party’s figurehead and
a former prime minister who was jailed by an anticorruption court this month,
was rushed to a hospital on Sunday because of chest pains.
And on Monday, it appeared as if the party
could lose another piece of its empire: the provincial assembly in Punjab,
regarded as the silver medal of Pakistani politics.
Mr. Khan, whose campaign was said to have
been backed by the military, is still trying to gather enough support to form a
majority coalition in the national Parliament. But on Monday, the influential
newspaper Dawn was already calling him the prime minister in waiting.
While the national politics are being sorted
out, Mr. Khan’s party has opened a second front in Punjab, the nation’s richest
and most populous province, home to the cities of Lahore and Rawalpindi and
more than half of Pakistan’s 200 million people.
Lawmakers in Punjab wield huge power over
education, law enforcement and billions of dollars in development funds. The
province is considered the cultural heart of the country and enormously
influential.
Mr. Khan’s party, the Pakistan Movement for
Justice, won fewer provincial seats in Punjab than the P.M.L.-N., but over the
weekend Mr. Khan persuaded several independent politicians to join his side.
Though the P.M.L.-N. has also been wooing independents, analysts said that as
of Monday night, Mr. Khan’s party maintained a slight edge.
Both the national Parliament and the Punjab
legislature have been controlled for years by the P.M.L.-N., which in turn was
dominated by Mr. Sharif. But he frequently clashed with another powerful
player, the military, which has ruled Pakistan for much of its 70-year history
either directly or through interference in political affairs.
Rights groups, academics and other observers
have said that in the months leading up to the July 25 election, military and
security officials targeted members of the P.M.L.-N. and other parties so that
Mr. Khan could cruise to victory. They also say the military pressured the
courts to remove Mr. Sharif from office last year and convict him in a
corruption case this month.
In the ruling that ousted Mr. Sharif from
office last year, the Supreme Court concluded that he and his family members
could not explain how they were able to afford several expensive London
apartments and that they had failed to provide a money trail.
Analysts say his subsequent prosecution was
timed to do the most damage to his party.
Mr. Sharif, 68, who is serving a 10-year
prison sentence in Rawalpindi, was moved to a hospital in Islamabad, the
capital, after being examined by doctors. Two years ago, he had open-heart
surgery in London, and he has diabetes and kidney problems. As he was sped
through the hospital gates on Sunday, dozens of party workers who had gathered
to show their support and affection shouted out, “We love you!”
His appeal has been scheduled for Tuesday,
and his lawyer said that conditions at the prison and the stress of the
electoral defeat had contributed to his deteriorating health.
“This has been very hard on him,” said the
lawyer, Khawaja Haris, who was poring over a stack of highlighted legal
documents on Monday afternoon in an Islamabad hotel.
Despite the alleged military support, Mr.
Khan’s party fell short of an outright majority, and his bid to form a
government has been complicated by his own success.
Mr. Khan ran personally for five seats and
won them all, which the Pakistani news media said was unprecedented. But while
candidates are allowed to run for multiple parliamentary seats in the same
election, they can hold only one.
So Mr. Khan now has to relinquish four of his
five seats; special elections will be scheduled in the coming months to fill
the vacancies. The upshot is that his party will have at least four fewer votes
in Parliament when it comes time to select a prime minister.
This, on top of a flurry of recount requests,
could mean his party might not be as dominant as initially believed. Still,
most analysts predict that Mr. Khan, who struggled for years to build a
political following while transforming himself from an elite socialite into a
populist figure, will prevail.
“I have absolutely no reason to believe that
anyone else will be the prime minister of Pakistan other than Imran Khan,” said
Sohail Warraich, a well-known political commentator and author.
Jockeying for support in Parliament is
typical after an election, he said, and the prospect of proximity to power
would entice enough independent politicians and smaller parties to join Mr.
Khan.
The Pakistan Movement for Justice is already
planning Mr. Khan’s swearing-in, promising it will be “a people’s ceremony.”
Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesman for Mr. Khan’s
party, claimed Monday evening that it had found the votes it required both in
Parliament and in the Punjab legislature. “We have attained the numbers,” Mr.
Chaudhry said.
A few days ago, some of the losing parties,
furious about the military’s hand in the election, had threatened to stage
street protests, and some candidates had even talked of boycotting Parliament
and not taking their seats.
But those threats seemed to be becoming more
tempered on Monday, even as several rival parties gathered in Islamabad to
discuss a joint protest strategy over what they claim was massive rigging in
the general election.
“We demand that the whole election commission
should resign,” Raja Zafarul Haq, a senior P.M.L.-N. leader, said after the
meeting.
“We reject these rigged elections,” said the
former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, a leader of the Pakistan Peoples
Party, traditionally the P.M.L.-N.’s main competitor.
The rival parties say they will hold more
rounds of consultations to reach a decisive course of action. But all have
agreed to take their seats in the Parliament.
“There is no doubt the elections were
systematically rigged,” said Qaisar Sharif, a spokesman for an Islamist
political party. “But the country is not in a situation to face street
protests.”
He, too, seemed to accept that Mr. Khan would
be the next prime minister, using a common shorthand for Pakistan’s military
and intelligence services.
“The establishment made them win the
elections,” he said. “Therefore, the establishment will ensure Imran gets the
number to become the P.M.”
