Making Sense of Elections in Pakistan: Challenges Galore

The February 2024 elections in Pakistan threw up a hung parliament, with Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerging as the single largest party. The elections were a testament to the sustained political re-engineering by the powerful deep state of Pakistan to ensure a pliable civilian government amenable to its diktats. However, the results were contrary to the expectations of the powerful establishment, which wanted to diminish Imran Khan's role in Pakistani politics and took all possible measures, ranging from disqualifying him from contesting elections to disallowing his party to use the symbol it was assigned earlier. In the aftermath of the elections, Imran's party was kept out of power, and a coalition consisting of parties opposed to him was stitched together to lead the government. This article seeks to analyse the state of Pakistani politics both during and after the elections, and identify the challenges Pakistan is going to face in the days to come.