Losing symbol won’t just hurt PTI, it’ll benefit rivals

KARACHI: The only way out for the PTI after the ECP’s decision on Friday is to seek a reversal of the ruling in the courts. According to legal and electoral experts, if the decision is not reversed then PTI candidates will be able to only contest as independent candidates, and will not be bound by the rule of party discipline.

PILDAT President Ahmed Bilal Mehboob tells The News: “I recall that the PPP was deprived of its election symbol of the sword and the PML-N lost its old symbol of the lantern. PPPP & PMLN later got the arrow and the tiger as election symbols respectively but the circumstances of these changes were different from the ones we find the PTI in.”

He explains that the situation is somewhat different for the PTI in that “it is not just the deprivation of the cricket bat as an election symbol, it is the de-enlistment of the party with the ECP which means that the party is not entitled to any common symbol and the party is practically out of the electoral arena. Its affiliates elected to an assembly as independent candidates may decide to form a parliamentary group in an assembly but no party discipline will apply to them. They may vote for Nawaz Sharif or for that matter any other candidate for PM. The obvious way out for the PTI is to approach the courts and seek a reversal of the ECP decision.”

Earlier, speaking to Geo News soon after the ECP’s decision, former ECP secretary Kanwar Muhammad Dilshad had also said that candidates from the PTI would have to contest the general elections as independent candidates, not as party candidates. Dilshad explained that “Section 215, under which the ECP had given its verdict, gives the party the right to appeal in the Supreme Court.”

On being asked if the PTI can hold intraparty elections again, Dilshad told Geo News that the election laws do not provide for intra-party elections to be held repeatedly: “There is no third-time option for the PTI now [to hold its intraparty polls]”. Since the election is so near, does the PTI even have time to get its symbol back? According to Dilshad, there is time yet for the symbol to be awarded -- “January 10” -- and “the Supreme Court will give its verdict in a matter of days.”Dilshad also pointed out that “had there been no challenge to the PTI’s intraparty election, the ECP would not have taken suo-motu notice on this; the reason the ECP took notice was precisely because there was a challenge to the polls held by the PTI.”The PTI has expectedly reacted to the ECP’s verdict with outrage but says it is prepared to challenge the decision. Lawyer Abuzar Salman Khan Niazi -- who has been part of Imran Khan’s legal team on various occasions -- took to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday night, writing that “[the] PTI without bat only for 2,3 days. No court will uphold this absurd decision. It will remain a shame for [the] ECP for all times to come.”

Talking to host Muhammad Junaid on Geo’s Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Saath on Friday night, lawyer Naeem Haider Panjutha who is also the spokesman to Imran Khan on legal affairs called the ECP’s decision “the biggest rigging” done during this electoral process. Panjutha said that the PTI will be challenging the verdict: “We can challenge it in the Islamabad High Court and we are making our strategy after consultations” -- but did not offer any specifics. When asked how the PTI was looking at the loss of its election symbol, he said that he had earlier asked Imran Khan about what happens if the bat symbol is lost: “Imran Khan told me that even if they give us any other symbol, we will win with any symbol.” He added that “if you look at records from 1960 onwards, you’ll see that only the PTI’s intraparty election has been challenged this way.”Analyst Aasiya Riaz offers a historical context to the situation in her conversation with The News. She says: “If you recall, the most prominent example of a party denied of its electoral symbol was the PPP under Gen Ziaul Haq after the 1977 election. Earlier the PPP under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had contested on the symbol of sword. The PPP got back the symbol of the sword nearly four decades later in 2018 after a legal battle though by then it chose to continue to contest on the symbol of the arrow.”On what happens now after the ECP’s verdict, she explains that: “Just like the PML-N senators who are still appearing on the Senate website as independents, those belonging to the PTI will continue to be counted as the PTI though that is a technicality. Being independents though, they have the option to join any party that forms government if they choose to. Or be ‘forced’ or ‘facilitated’ to make a forward bloc as was the case with the PPP-Patriots in 2002 and in other cases.”

In his comments to Geo News on Friday night, former law minister and PML-N leader Azam Nazeer Tarar had pointed out that “If things were not done per law and instead a mock exercise was done [by the PTI], and if the ECP -- which has judicial powers also as a tribunal -- is not satisfied with the polls held by the PTI then I think laws are made for the very reason that they be followed”.Reacting to Gohar Khan’s statement that this places a question mark on the electoral process, Tarar said that “this is not the first time this has happened....other parties too have in the past lost their election symbols”, adding that “if the PTI feels that it is popular and its popularity is not because of a symbol but because of their leader and their work, then I feel that if they are expecting people to vote for them that should not be compromised just because of a symbol.”Aasiya Riaz seems to agree with this sentiment: “The PTI won’t suffer much by losing the symbol, really. The vote bank is that of Imran Khan, not of an election symbol”.

Supreme Court advocate Basil Nabi Malik, however, feels that the decision “could impact the PTI to a certain extent -- as far as the electorate is concerned. The symbol is a manner for people to identify the party even without having to read the names on the ballot papers. It can serve as a way to ensure that those who may not be well versed with individual candidate affiliations or particularly literate can also participate and vote for their party of choice. To such an extent, perhaps a limited impact can be expected”. Malik says that this will be a testing time for the PTI in the sense that “if its candidates run as independents, the party’s ability to keep all its candidates together during the election process and especially after will be tested, and perhaps, compromised. Other protections that parties have in relation to candidates winning on their tickets and then attempting to switch sides also will not be available. The PTI will have to challenge this decision in the superior courts, and it will in all likelihood do exactly that”.Riaz ends her talk with The News on a sombre note: “The larger issue is that the country has witnessed such blatant manipulation in every election after 1985 and instead of learning from the issues created for governance and economy in the process, those manipulating continue to be sanguine about their modus operandi. A free and fair election would remain a dream until the establishment decides to extricate fully from the political arena, and political parties create unbreakable rules to never seek or use their support in government formation”.