ISAS Briefs

Pakistan will witness national parliamentary elections on 25 July 2018. Opinion polls are predicting a tight battle between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. Khan’s relentless focus on the issue of corruption has won him broad support, especially amongst the urban youth. He has also made a conscious effort to appeal to religiously and socially conservative sections of Pakistani society. He has, for instance, expressed strong support for the ‘blasphemy laws’. Apart from attempting to stitch together a wide coalition of voters, Khan has also astutely won over a number of politically powerful traditional elites, feudal leaders and spiritual authorities who had previously been elected under the PML-N ticket. Even before the votes are in, his opponents have already described this as an election rigged in his favour by the military. If Khan does emerge as the next prime minister of Pakistan, he may find himself having to confront allegations of match fixing and fielding questions on the legitimacy of the electoral process itself.