The decline of Islamic parties in Pakistan’s elections.. What is the relationship between Imran Khan?

Imran Khan's party topped the election results, while the fortunes of Islamic parties declined even in their strongholds (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD -

Islamic groups and parties in Pakistan have never been worse off than they are today at the political level and electoral achievement, according to the results of the recent general elections held on February 8.

The election results indicate the decline of Islamic groups and parties in Pakistani political life, as these parties recorded their worst results since the beginning of the current century, if not throughout the history of Pakistan, which gained independence in 1947.

Since the beginning of the current century, Pakistan has witnessed 5 general elections, and over the course of its short history - which witnessed 3 military coups - it has witnessed 12 general elections, in which Islamic parties and groups were strongly present, but they began to decline in the last three elections, starting in 2013.

In an Islamic country like Pakistan, political parties are very popular, and they have a very high ability to mobilize on Islamic and popular issues and issues related to the Islamic world, such as the Kashmir conflict and the Palestinian issue. These parties have mobilized very large crowds to support the Palestinian people during the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.

Emir of the Pakistani Islamic Group Siraj ul-Haq while casting his vote in Dir district of Khyber Province (Al Jazeera)

Gradual bleeding

In the recent elections, Pakistani Islamic parties did not achieve any electoral progress, whether at the level of the National Assembly or the provincial councils.

The Islamic Group - which is considered the largest Islamic group in Pakistan and has a wide spread throughout the country - was unable to obtain any seat in the National Assembly (Federal Parliament), while it obtained only 5 seats in the regional councils, and its leader, Siraj ul-Haq, lost the elections in the district. For which she was nominated.

Due to the disappointing results, the Emir of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, Maulana Sirajul Haq, resigned from the leadership of the group, holding himself responsible for the major electoral failure.

On the other hand, the Association of Islamic Scholars won only 4 seats in the elections, and the association’s leader, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, lost in his district, but yesterday, Friday, the Election Commission announced his victory in the district.

In the 2013 elections, the Association of Islamic Scholars obtained a total of 15 seats, while it obtained 4 seats in the National Council, in addition to seats in the regional councils.

As for the 2018 elections, the bloc of Islamic parties combined, or the so-called “Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal,” won only 14 seats, which indicates a gradual decline affecting Islamic groups and parties in Pakistan.

In the 2002 elections, the United Action Council alliance had won 64 seats in the National Council, making it the third political bloc in Parliament, but this entity was dissolved in 2008 and returned again in the 2018 elections.

The Islamic Group's performance was also prominent in the 2002 elections, especially at the regional level in the northwestern region (Sarhad), where it achieved significant progress that qualified it to form the local government in that region.

Reasons for decline

In an attempt to determine the reasons for the significant decline of Islamic groups in Pakistan and whether it has religious dimensions, the head of the Institute of Political Studies in Islamabad, Khaled Rahman, says that the recent elections and those that preceded them were not a religious battle or between Islamic forces and non-Islamic forces, that is, Islam was not in the middle. The battle.

Rahman added in his interview with Al Jazeera Net, "There is no party among the major parties that fights Islam and Islamic culture in Pakistan. On the contrary, in many issues that affect Islam, we find all parties on the same page."

Rahman gave an example of the 2002 elections, where the battle was between Islam or hostility to America, which had begun its invasion of Afghanistan, and the parties that cooperated with the American invasion of Afghanistan, and therefore the Islamic parties achieved great progress in the elections.

For his part, Abdul Wahab Al-Derawi, a political researcher and member of the International Islamic Literature Association, says that some of the reasons are related to external and internal interventions to fight these religious groups under one pretext or another.

Al-Dirawi believes that in the recent elections, these parties were excluded because they significantly supported the Afghan Taliban government politically and popularly, when the leader of the Association of Islamic Scholars, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, tried to reform the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban government, which showed the dissatisfaction of some countries that do not want relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan to be good. Cohesive, in addition to the Islamic parties’ support for the Palestinian resistance represented by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).

Al-Dirawi added in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net that there are also internal reasons that played a pivotal role in the decline of the Islamic parties, which is that the Pakistani people are currently demanding an improvement in the economy and living conditions, and therefore they support parties that focus on improving the economic situation in their electoral program.

A conference in Pakistan in support of Gaza, in the presence of Hamas leader Khaled Al-Qaddoumi (Al-Jazeera)

What is the relationship with Imran Khan?

Khalid Rahman says that the battle in the current elections was between the supporters of Imran Khan and the Insaf Party on the one hand and its opponents on the other, adding, “It can be said that the battle is between the opponents of the deep state and its supporters.”

Rahman believes that the political crisis that the country witnessed over the past two years and the overthrow of the Insaf Party from power created a state of political tension in the Pakistani arena, making Imran Khan the focus of the conflict to some extent.

For his part, Abdul Karim Shah, political analyst and director of the Islamabad Center for Political Studies, said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that the grievance against Imran Khan greatly dominated the electoral scene.

Shah added that Islamic parties are very popular - for example - in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but the entire region is angry and therefore the results were very overwhelming for everyone, because most of those parties stood against “justice” and with “corruption,” as he described it.

He continued, "No matter what his status, Maulana stood to save the corrupt people (Nawaz and Zardari), whose corruption no one doubts, and whoever stands by them - whether Islamic or otherwise - is rejected by the people."

Source: Al Jazeera