In addition to ensuring voting accessibility for individuals with reading limitations, electoral symbols serve as the foundation for party campaigns.
Electoral symbols are crucial in a democratic process. As Pakistan prepares for upcoming general elections, posters displaying party symbols can be seen on utility poles and roadside walls throughout cities and towns.
Political parties have started campaigning, putting up propaganda posters. However, the symbol of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), believed to be the country’s most popular party, seems to be missing due to a crackdown on the PTI and its jailed leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s party has been prohibited from using the party symbol in the elections scheduled for February 8. PTI members and supporters claim that the blocking of its symbol, a cricket bat, is a tactic by the military-backed caretaker government to ensure the party’s defeat.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, has alleged that seven of his party’s national and provincial assembly candidates have been assigned the wrong electoral symbols in the eastern Punjab province. Bhutto claimed that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) acted under pressure from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been accused of making a deal with the country’s military that controls most levers of power from behind the scenes. Sharif, who returned to Pakistan in October after several years of self-imposed exile, has rejected the allegations.
So why are party symbols important, and will the ban on the PTI symbol harm the party?
Why did PTI lose its bat?
The ECP omitted PTI’s bat symbol on December 22 on the grounds that the party had not held intra-party elections, which are required by law. This made the party ineligible to have a symbol for the 2024 elections.
An intra-party election conducted by the PTI on June 8, 2022 was not recognized by the ECP on the grounds that it was not “just and fair”. The ECP also passed similar orders against 13 marginal political parties.
Critics and supporters of PTI have considered it a deliberate attempt to hinder the party’s success in the elections. PTI lawyer Syed Ali Zafar stated, “The cricket bat was unjustly revoked through an illegal order.” An attempt by the PTI to get the ban overturned failed as Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld the election commission’s decision,
Which is significant to the PTI because it is reminiscent of Khan’s success as a former cricketer.
Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting, a New York-based political risk advisory company, said the decision to block PTI symbol is “politically motivated”.
“They are part of a pattern of the Pakistani state using administrative measures, along with coercion, to deny PTI a pathway toward electoral victory,” he said, referring to the high popularity of Khan.
Nadia Malik, Head of Geo Television’s election cell, says that intra-party elections are a farce in Pakistan but the ECP did not hold other parties accountable, letting them scot-free.
“Losing a symbol is not something new in Pakistan but PTI can not even choose a different symbol for all their candidates,” as the deadline for that has passed.
The ECP has defended its decision saying the elections will be further delayed if the process of changing symbols continues.
To counter the confusion that this can create, the party’s social media team is working on a portal that allows voters to search for names and symbols of PTI’s candidates, Malik added. “PTI is really good at social outreach in that way.”
But one in every two Pakistanis does not own a smartphone, making it difficult for the PTI to reach out to voters.
“The end result of the ECP’s decision, and the Supreme Court’s ludicrous affirmation of it, is the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and the liquidation of the country’s largest party in the run-up to the polls,” Asad Rahim Khan, a constitutional expert, said.
“Flaws in intra-party elections don’t merit such a disproportionate punishment anywhere in the actual law. Even otherwise, Pakistan’s Constitution and clearly developed jurisprudence favors political parties and their right to contest.”
