s the country approaches yet another general election marred by allegations of pre-poll rigging, among others by powerful people in the unelected state institutions, a significant part of the unfolding drama appears to be a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. The so called electable candidates have been a central character in this drama ever since the gradual institutionalisation of popular sovereignty in the form of a parliamentary democratic systembegan. The process had begun early in the 20^th Century with rudimentary colonial era reforms and culminated in the post-colonial achievement of universal franchise. Sweat hearts of the powers-that-be – whether the White colonial masters of yore or the brown sahibs that succeeded them – the electables have served as key nodes between the state and the society across the region that is now Pakistan. They have always had a foot in the corridor of (state) power, where they espouse a meekdemeanor in front of their masters; and the other among the people whose aspirations they convey as their mandate and suppress when needed. Their control and ownership of key resources, including land and state employment, enable them to perform this mediatory function effectively.

The electables are not dependent on political parties per se. If they are denied the party ticket or the cost of early commitment appears steep, they are not reluctant to run as independents as many of them do equally well without allegiance to a particular party. The fact that they can often join the party of their choice after winning the popular mandate tends to encourage such behavior. In Sahiwal’s NA-143 constituency, for instance, Chaudhary Zahid Iqbal and TufailJutt, quintessential electables, are contesting the February 8 elections as independents after Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, theparty they have been associated with, was unable to award them its ticket. The constraint is an outcome of the PML-N’s half-hearted seat adjustment with the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party. For its part, the IPP appears to be the latest platform in the Punjab for electables to band together ahead of the polls.Its very formation has been described by some critics as part of a grand political engineering project. Similar allegations have been made in recent memory following the formation of the Balochistan AwamiParty and the Grand Democratic Alliance. In the nearby Okara district, Riaz-ul Haq Jujhad famously gone independent after the denial of a party ticket and convincingly beaten the party’s choice for the seat. The election over, the party had again embraced him. This year, he has helped the party kick-start its campaign with a power show in Okara.

Given their sizeable number and relative ideological neutrality, the electables can not only join just about any party, they can also join hands to form new parties at the behest of the powers-that-be thereby assuring greater rewards in terms of patronage. However, such banding together may eventually take its own course. The Bhuttos of Larkana and Sharifs of Lahore may have started as regional electable willing initially to cooperate with, even be guided by, the prevailing powers, but were able later to chart their own destiny. In both these instances, the electables transitioned from the king’s party to develop anti-establishment credentials, even if their parties continued later to explore and retainthe option of a return to the same-page zone. Thus, even though the electables are regarded mostly as likely allies of the king’s parties against the parties on the receiving end – the PPP in the ’80s, the PML-N since the ’90s, and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf of late – the increasingly competitive electoral field post-2008 means that some groups of electables are also to be found in the putatively anti-establishment parties.

How, if at all, can democratic politics in Pakistanrid itself of the electables? It has been argued that a strengthening of party organisations can make the electables redundant. Once political parties replace them as an effective intermediatory between the state and the society, the lure of the electable candidate will diminish. It has been argued that some progress has already been made in this direction by at least three mainstream parties – the PML-N, the PPP and the PTI. The PML-N and the PPP already have core officialsand experts such as Pervaiz Rashid, Musaddiq Malik, Marriyam Aurengzeb, Sherry Rehman, Farhatullah Babar and Taj Haider, etc. Given that the PTI is currently in an anti-establishment phase, the other two parties have experienced earlier, it’s hard to say which of its current coterie of officials, loyalists and experts with remain with it in the days and weeks to come. However, it is equally hard to overlook its solid institutional structure particularly among the urban professional classes and the Pakistani diaspora.

While political workers lacking safe seats they can retain without the party’s blessing too may change loyalties, their freedom of action is much more constrained. This makes them less likely in most situations to act like the electables. A strengthening of party institutions is likely to curtail the influence of electables in the determination of party policy. Yet, it is important to bear in mind that party institutionalisation cannot be removed from the broader socio-economic context. The uneven geography of electable influence on party institutions is a testament to this hypothesis. This geography maps roughly onto the rural-urban divide. Most of the quintessential electables are thus found in the traditionally rural settings outside the densely urbanised and peri-urban zones of Karachi, central Punjab and the Peshawar valley. It is important also not to reify this connection. Historically, the electables in our part of colonial India had emerged as part of the indirect arrangement of colonial rule where heads of large, landed estates (jagirs) and tribal chieftains were inducted into the colonial governance apparatus and became the key mediatory between the state and the society. Thus, given the right mix of policy initiatives, beginning with a re-imagination of the landholding patterns and revamping of industrial and commercial elites’ privileges, we can expect to see the decline of electables and the rise of party institutions across rural settings too. If slogans like “land to the tiller,” full employment and resource redistribution feel too radical, there may be a way to rephrase those. However, the question of economic inequality has to be addressed before we can expect any enduring changes in the patterns of electoral outcomes.