This month witnessed a monumental election in Pakistan, hailed by many experts as a potential game-changer in the country’s history. Against a backdrop of significant documented pre-poll rigging, international observers considered the election result to be predetermined with major global news outlets reporting it as so. However, in what was dubbed a ‘shocking’ victory by The Guardian, PTI asserted a two-thirds majority based on evidence gathered from polling stations on election day. The New York Times called it completely ‘stunning’, as did The Washington Post that also called it a ‘display of defiance’.
With a turnout that could be the largest in Pakistan’s history, hundreds of millions of voters, including a significant number of first-time voters and women, the election marks a pivotal moment in a country with a history of hybrid democracies and prolonged military rules.
Despite the erosion of old power structures, they still remain deeply entrenched. On election day, the voting process encountered disruptions due to a comprehensive shutdown of mobile phone networks. Subsequently, a results reporting delay persisted after the polls closed as the election commission grappled with unspecified “internet issues“. Candidates from purportedly military-backed political parties secured victories in constituencies initially considered major wins for the PTI as election results unfolded. PTI supporters swiftly accused the military and the caretaker government of election rigging, flooding social media with videos highlighting irregularities at polling stations. X was promptly shut down for hours, protests were quashed, and PTI candidates faced violence, echoing similar narratives from both the 2013 and 2018 polls. Country analysts may say this has been the status quo since Pakistan’s inception.
Moreover, the representations of Pakistan by international media are also slow to change. Almost all Western media depictions of PTI supporters show the same old trope of bearded men angrily waving their party flags around. They do not show the many women and children at political rallies, they do not show the energetic and tech savvy youngsters, they do not show the middle class candidates from disenfranchised constituencies calmly demanding election commission officials for an explanation of their convoluted election math, and they do not show the jubilant unity displayed by Sunnis and Shias as they celebrated a PTI victory in the troubled Parachinar. Unfortunately, Western media headlines are still Orientalist in nature, with a distinct undertone of infantilization and condescending pathos with headlines such as ‘Confusion’ prevails, things are absolutely ‘bonkers’ in Pakistan and the country is a ‘fiasco’. Western media coverage of the Pakistani election remains, unfortunately, mostly stereotypical. Nothing that hasn’t been presented before.
Nevertheless, a peculiar framing was adopted by Western mainstream media. Many articles coming out of Western media appear to almost relish the discomfiture of the Pakistani military institution. Article headlines such as ‘Pakistan’s voters tell the generals where to put it’, ‘The ‘generals’ elections’ in Pakistan that turned against the military’, and ‘Pakistan’s youth deliver a stinging rebuke to military elite’ all give away more about the true state of the relationship between Western states and the Pakistani military than the one between Pakistani voters and Imran Khan.
The fact that news outlets tend to get their cues from the state, particularly when covering foreign elections, has been well studied, particularly the connection between Western governments and Western news outlets. The extensive and unexpectedly strongly worded coverage of the Pakistani election in the West has been focused on the role of the Pakistani military.
This friction in the coverage is surprising, considering the Pakistani military enjoys strong ties with the US, with many of its officers receiving military training in the US for decades. Arguably, this negative reporting comes in response to the alleged support offered by the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) support to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The nature of such reporting could also be explained by the fact that the US, the UK and the EU have called for investigations into allegations of rigging and have not recognised an official winner yet. With that said, the US State Department appears to be more cautious in its statement vis-a-vis the Pakistani context, describing the extensive rigging as mere irregularities. This stance departs from the strongly worded reaction concerning the rigging allegations in the recently held Bangladeshi elections. Perhaps the current US administration may not be too keen on the potential premiership of Imran Khan, given his extensive criticism of how the US pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021 and more. For him, the US “really messed up”.
This peculiarity reflects the uniqueness of the 2024 Pakistan General Election and what it may entail for the Western world. The Pakistani electorate is no longer as malleable as before, and that democracy may have finally started to take root after almost 80 years. The Western world may have new power stakeholders to engage in the country, and perhaps new calculations must be made regarding regional politics. Hopefully, they will be more prepared next time instead of being stunned.
This article originally appeared in the opinion section of the website Middle East Monitor.
