Pakistan Elections 2024: Remember the dawn of July 21, 1988? That day, an announcement came from Rawalpindi-based Pakistan Army General Headquarters (GHQ).
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who had captured power in a coup after ousting Benazir Bhutto’s father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto from premiership in 1977, declared that the scheduled elections in the country would be held on party-less basis. Zia’s logic? Party-based elections were “against the spirit of Islam”.
July 21, 1988 was exactly two months before Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the present-day chief of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was prematurely born to the future prime minister Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari, who went on to become president in 2008 months after his wife’s assassination.
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto rests inside the presidential car with husband Asif Ali Zardari cuddling their baby son Bilawal, age 1 on 17 October 1989 | AFP
Zia’s order on that day meant the candidates in 1988 elections were decreed to contest as independents.
Déjà vu in 2024?
Yes, the 1988 decree is much like the one being suffered by the candidates backed by ousted Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party Pakistan-Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). They contested the elections on Feburary 8 without PTI’s election symbol: the cricket bat. 
Supporters of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) hold a giant cricket bat with the colours and initials of the party on July 20, 2018 | AFP
The only difference is that in 1988 — Zia’s ninth year in power — the Islamist dictator did not spare any political party at the time; he wanted all of them out of the election race, not just one. 
Pakistani dictator Muhammad Zia-Ul-Haq addresses the nation, on June 15, 1988 | AFP
But Zia didn’t live to see what happened next.
The move was challenged in the Supreme Court. Before Supreme Court’s decision on the party-less elections, Zia was killed in a mysterious plane crash along with 30 others on August 17, 1988.
This included the chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff, the Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Mian Afzaal, eight senior officers of the Pakistan Armed Forces, the US ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel and his wife.
With that ill-fated C-130 aircraft, the nucleus of power in Pakistan also nosedived.
An unexpected wave of celebrations gripped India’s western neighbour after Zia’s death. Relieved that their country’s dictator was gone, “the sweet shops were sold out in Lahore. In Karachi, the pan shops were giving away the betel nut for free. ‘Zia is dead! Zia is dead!’, screamed newspaper hawkers”, wrote Benazir Bhutto in her autobiography Daughter of the East.
On October 5, 1988, a 12-judge bench of Pakistani Supreme Court ruled that all political parties were eligible to contest the elections and that political symbols would be allocated in the polling places to parties rather than to individuals.
“The caretaker administration accepted the court’s decision. What else could Zia’s men do with the whole world watching? Spontaneous demonstrations of joy broke out all over the country,” Benazir added further in her autobiography’s chapter titled ‘The People Prevail’.
In December 1988, Benazir took oath as Pakistan’s prime minister following one of the country’s least disputed national elections till date.
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Benazir Bhutto (R) takes oath as Prime Minister of Pakistan near President Ghulam Ishaq Khan at the parliament building in Islamabad, 02 December 1988. Benazir Bhutto became the first ever woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state | AFP
Unlike 2024, Pakistani judiciary emerged as the ultimate arbiter and denied the establishment a party-less election.
Pakistan elections: Judiciary as ultimate arbiter
Let’s now cut to recent times.
Following his April 2022 ouster in a no-trust vote, Khan repeatedly petitioned the Supreme Court, then led by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on a series of election-related disputes over suspension of legislatures in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa amid his demand for snap polls.
His May 9, 2023 arrest on corruption charges triggered a nationwide protest by PTI supporters, including at GHQ in Rawalpindi, the real power behind the semblance of democracy in Islamabad.
It was Chief Justice Bandial’s Supreme Court bench that ordered Khan’s release after the May 9 rampage.
“The chief justices in the past have been browbeaten by the army and made to act in their favour. But this one so far has not done so. He would have known that the army was behind Imran Khan’s arrest and despite that he ordered his release. He’s a bold guy,” Sharat Sabharwal, India’s former ambassador to Pakistan told WION on May 15, 2023.
Amid all this, the then PML-N-led government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power after Khan’s April 2022 ouster, “remained well aware of its sinking popularity,” International Crisis Group noted in its report ahead of Pakistan Elections, published on February 6.
The PML-N “hoped that its leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was in self-imposed exile in London, would be able to return to Pakistan before the polls, and that his popularity would revive its electoral prospects,” it noted.
The report said that the main hurdle, “in the eyes of the PML-N”, was the Bandial-led Supreme Court, since Nawaz’s ability to contest the elections depended on the judiciary upholding his appeals of convictions in two corruption cases.
But Judge Bandial retired on September 16, 2023.
Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan a month later after a four-year exile.
And the court lifted the ban against him from holding office.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Jan 13 rejected Imran Khan’s plea to retain its traditional electoral symbol of a cricket bat, in the final setback to the incarcerated leader.
Also watch | Pakistan Election Result 2024: Independents backed by Imran Khan party take the lead in Pak polls
But now, history is repeating for the military-intelligence establishment and entrenched political parties.
At half-way point of election results, Imran Khan-backed candidates, who contested without the party symbol as independents, are leading. At the time of filing this report, it’s clear one of the several scenarios are possible: PTI may emerge victorious but still won’t be able to form government, as its MPs are now ‘independent’; PPP and PML-N might come together to form a coalition government that might not have people’s confidence; independent MPs might become the kingmakers, or form a government with support from other smaller parties.
The military-intelligence establishment is expected to meddle again, like it did so many times in the past.
But the people of Pakistan have spoken. It’s up to the politicians to respect it, or not.
