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Books on Pakistan
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Update No: 025 - (28/02/08)
Elections: some surprises but no shock
The result of the February Pakistani elections was mostly in line with
forecasts, except that no wave of solidarity support for the PPP in the wake of
the assassination of Benazir Bhutto materialized. With almost 33%, the PPP was
by far the largest party and the closest thing to a national party with MPs
relatively well distributed among provinces, but posted an altogether relatively
mediocre performance. In part this might have due to manipulations by the
outgoing government, which tried hard to maintain the support of large
landowners in order to secure the rural vote and might well have indulged in
election rigging too. The 24% obtained by the PML-Q is indeed more than expected
and won it the second place in terms of popular vote, although not in terms of
seats, where the PML-N of Nawaz Sharif obtained many more despite having just
20% of the votes. The Islamist coalition (MMA) fared very poorly with just 1.3%
of the votes, not least because all of its component parties except one
boycotted the vote.
Coalition in the making
The incumbents' supposed manipulation of the polls failed to deliver outright
victory, an impossible task anyway given the direction of the popular mood, but
avoided the PML-Q being wiped out and forces the new government to be based on a
wide and presumably shaky coalition. With about a third of the seats, the PPP
clearly needed to form a large coalition to be able to rule. Despite having in
the past negotiated with the PML-Q for a coalition, in the end the PPP
leadership bowed to popular pressure and offered an alliance to the PML-N, with
which they have an old enmity. It seems likely that Makhdoom Amin Fahim of the
PPP will be the next Prime Minister. He is not tarnished by past accusations of
corruption, but he lacks experience in government. With less then half the seats
between them, the two parties will also need to bring in smaller groups.
Musharraf might still hope to see the politicians discredit themselves and
recover some personal popularity later on or manipulate them against each other.
Differences already exist. Nawaz Sharif will be trying to strengthen his
position within the parliament by luring PML-Q MPs to join his party and indeed
13 outgoing MPs had already defected before the elections. The PPP is however
hostile to bringing any of these into the government, a fact which will likely
hamper Sharif's recruitment campaign. Sharif also appears more committed than
the PPP to re-appointing the judges sacked by Musharraf to their posts.
More evidence of economic slowdown
More signs of weakening economic trends have been reported during February, in
part due to power shortages. Exports have declined 12% over the year to December
and textile exports have been looking particularly weak. The January riots are
now estimated to have caused US$1.3 billion in losses in the power,
telecommunications and transport sectors. Foreign investment was already
declining during the first six months of the current financial year, down 32% on
the previous year. Both the current account deficit (up 31.1% during the same
period) and the services trade deficit (up 45%) continue to worsen rapidly,
threatening the future ability of the country to pay for imports of goods and
services. The excessive reliance of the outgoing government on foreign exchange
inflows to cover the deficits and the inability or unwillingness to bridge the
gap between imports and exports is widely seen as the cause of the worsening
situation. December data seems to suggest that the trend is towards a further
widening of the gap.
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