The mathematics of magical thinking in Pakistan’s general election

February 8, 2024 was an unusually wonderful spring day in Lahore, the heartland of Pakistan’s most populous province Punjab and arguably the eye of the storm in its general election. Just a few meters away from the school-turned-polling-station for the NA-120 constituency in the tree-lined cantonment stood the old military bungalow called Jinnah House. You could see its high white walls as you walked to the poll.

Walking beside me was my father, as old as Pakistan, wearing his best suit and holding his handwritten notes so he’d remember all the important details in the middle of a nationwide Internet blackout. 

We cast our votes in a very blue classroom surrounded by children’s crafts and with barely enough light to read our names off the print-outs. Meanwhile, a chatty ragtag group of coordinators ate biryani out of Styrofoam and passed a single election stamp around the room. If you lost that little stamp knob, God forbid, it could spell the end of democracy in that polling station. 

Exactly nine months ago to the day, I had driven down the same street to my parents’ house in a panic, black smoke rising over my old neighborhood as hundreds of protesters stormed Jinnah House following the arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan in May last year.

But on election day in a bizarre twist of faith or magic that nobody was expecting, the corpse of Khan’s party came suddenly, quietly, alive. 

Amal Khan

A fight between ordinary Pakistani civilians and the country’s revered, powerful army, only whispered about until that day, suddenly blew to the surface. It erupted beyond the banter of newsrooms and Twitter threads and pushed the country into its most tumultuous period in 76 years. Mass arrests, kidnappings, intimidation and scenes of heartbreaking cruelty followed, and Khan’s popular party was systematically dismantled, bone by bone by bone.

But on election day in a bizarre twist of faith or magic that nobody was expecting, the corpse of Khan’s party came suddenly, quietly, alive. 

Between the last general election in 2018 to now, Pakistan has added 21 million voters to its registration count. That’s roughly the population of Australia, give or take. 

And on Feb. 8, it seems the newbies came out to the polls. 

The resurrection of a party stripped of its core leadership, its election symbol, its dignity, its identity, with its founder in prison and its party workers also languishing in jails without bail, is confusing in a country like Pakistan. Usually, the patterns are pretty predictable here. Pakistanis are susceptible to intimidation, happy to be bribed, too poor to care, too illiterate to know better... go the stereotypes.

But after a year of crushing poverty, unemployment, soaring food and fuel prices and the sky falling on top of them, millions of people had nothing left to give or lose, except a fighting spirit. 

Give ordinary Pakistanis struggling to survive the credit they deserve for waking up on Feb. 8, pulling themselves up by their chappal straps, and walking to their polling stations. Lay to rest the offensive, damaging myth that the rural Pakistani voter is too illiterate, too unaware to know who they should vote for. On election day, millions of people who couldn’t read or write, millions of elderly, millions of first-time voters, researched and memorized the correct election symbols from among hundreds of independent candidates, and put their stamps in the right place. 

According to one independent polls watchdog, 47 percent of Pakistan’s electorate voted last week. That number is at par with some of the most developed, most politically empowered countries in the world.

The day after the election, and all the days since, have been mired in the same old, same-old. Rigging, false victories, conspiracies, endless newsroom debates, panicking politicians. But nothing is yet feeling truly routine in this huge and miraculous country of 230 million people. 

Election day was a great deal more than a win for Khan’s party. It was the softest glimmer of a living polity, of people still rebellious, still hopeful, still heartbroken enough to care. It’s the inkling of faith, of believing in miracles, that one only ever feels when the Pakistan cricket team wins a high stakes game. 

And for Pakistan’s future leaders civilian and military, it is the clear sign they didn’t ask for, that the times are deliberately, willfully changing. 

– The writer is an editor, Arab News Pakistan.
Tweets @amalkhan