<\/p>\n
Political and legal experts weigh in on what the PTI-backed candidates could do once they make their way into Parliament.<\/p>\n
Against all predictions by seasoned political pundits who frequent the circuit of Pakistan\u2019s 24\/7 television landscape, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI)-backed candidates are currently leading the roster of election results as they continue to trickle in over 24 hours since polling ended at 5pm on Thursday.<\/p>\n
While PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif, in his premature victory speech, indicated his willingness to form a coalition government, the strategy for PTI\u2019s brigade of independent winners remains unclear.<\/p>\n
Despite the electoral success, the PTI is still at a significant disadvantage, courtesy the ECP\u2019s decision to relieve it of its iconic \u2018bat\u2019 symbol<\/a> as well as the barrage of cases against its top-tier leadership who remain behind bars. This means that even if the candidates it is backing clinch the highest number of seats, the party may not be able to form a government as it won\u2019t be allotted a quota of minority seats. So what options does the PTI have from here? We put some of these questions before our panel of experts. Here is what they had to say:<\/p>\n According to journalist Wusatullah Khan, \u201cthere have been many more than this \u2014 during General Ziaul Haq\u2019s time, the entire Parliament was made up of independents.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1985, he explained, there were non-party based elections.<\/a> No parties were allowed to participate in the elections and everybody contested in their individual capacity. \u201cObviously everyone had someone\u2019s support but on paper they were all independent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The returned candidates went on the floor of Parliament and they gave their group or party the name of Pakistan Muslim League. \u201cToday, we call it PML-N or PML-Q, before that it was called Chattha league. They were all born on the floor of the non-party assembly of 1985,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n This wouldn\u2019t bide well for the party, said Khan. \u201cThey have done this before and you saw what happened to them. I don\u2019t think they are going to try the adventure again after the beating they took last time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He added, however, that it was possible that they would try to form a group and call it the Insaf group or any other name.<\/p>\n Journalist Zarrar Khuhro wasn\u2019t too optimistic about the prospects of this happening. \u201cThe underlying assumption behind this question is that things operate according to the rules and the ledger of the law but I think it\u2019s quite clear that in Pakistan this is not the case,\u201d he said, pointing to the troubles faced by the party and its leadership in recent months.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to look at it in the context of the back-to-back convictions of Imran Khan, the latest being in the fairly ridiculous iddat<\/em> case.<\/a> We have to look at the incredibly controversial and disproportionate sentences given to the PTI leaders and supporters, such as when the party\u2019s election symbol was taken away. When we look at that particular context, I don\u2019t see any way that there would suddenly be any magical relief for the PTI regardless of what rules they do or do not follow.<\/p>\n Lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii was slightly more upbeat about this, reasoning that though the ECP had denied the PTI an election symbol, it had not delisted the party. Basing his assessment on the petition of PTI-backed candidate Salman Akram Raja, who has approached the Supreme Court<\/a> to seek recognition that he would be contesting the polls as a PTI ticketholder and not as an independent candidate, Jaferii said that legally, the PTI remains a political party.<\/p>\n In his petition to the SC, Raja had also reasoned that though the PTI had been deprived of a single symbol for all its candidates by the ECP, its existence and functioning as a political party remained unaffected. The party continues to exist and has not been dissolved, he had said.<\/p>\n According to Khuhro, \u201ca lot of people would be willing to ally with them. Now I would hesitate to give a blanket statement about what all independents \u2014 and I am assuming we are talking about PTI-linked independents \u2014 will do.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, however, that this would be different from region to region. \u201cIn KP, I think the defectors from the PTI will be treated very harshly by the public. We have seen what seems to be a complete sweep for the PTI-linked candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n In South Punjab, however, the position might be very different and PML-N may be able to bag a couple of the independents over, he said. \u201cSome may opt to join the victors based on the calculation that any sort of backlash they suffer will be temporary and, if not, at the very least, manageable.\u201d<\/p>\n According to journalist Shahzeb Jilani, once the returned candidates are notified, they then have three days to decide if they want to independently support a political party or join a party as a group.<\/p>\n According to journalist Shahzeb Jilani, if the PTI-backed independents want to emerge as the biggest group in Parliament, they would have to join an existing political party. \u201cThe name that is being mentioned is the Majlis Wahdat-i-Muslimeen (MWM) which is already a registered party,\u201d he said. The two parties have earlier forged alliances for local government elections.<\/a> If they join that party, they will also get reserved seats and their numbers will go further up and then they can be a contender for the Leader of the House \u2019<\/p>\n He added, however, that they may get inducements from bigger players in the form of various incentives to deflect from the PTI party line. \u201cBut if they are in one group, in one party, they will be a big bloc and will enjoy considerable influence in Parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n For this, too, Jilani said the PTI would have to join a political party. \u201cIf they go as a bloc in one of the existing parties, obviously they would want to elect the Leader of the House, if they have the biggest number. If they can\u2019t, for some reason, then yes, the second best choice will be to opt for Leader of the Opposition.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Political and legal experts weigh in on what the PTI-backed candidates could do once they make their way into Parliament. Against all predictions by seasoned political pundits who frequent the circuit of Pakistan\u2019s 24\/7 television landscape, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI)-backed candidates are currently leading the roster of election results as they continue to trickle in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/02\/09212801e68284f.gif?r=215034","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Have so many independent candidates ever been elected to Parliament?<\/h3>\n
What happens if the PTI-backed independents win a substantial number of seats but refuse to come to the National Assembly?<\/h3>\n
If PTI-backed candidates form the largest bloc, can the party claim them as PTI members?<\/h3>\n
Does PML-N have a chance of forming the government with the support of independents?<\/h3>\n
Can PTI-linked independents elect a PM from among themselves?<\/h3>\n
Can PTI-backed candidates elect a Leader of the Opposition from among themselves?<\/h3>\n