General elections, originally scheduled to be held in 2023, were held in Pakistan on 8 February 2024 to elect the members of the 16th National Assembly. The Election Commission of Pakistan announced the detailed schedule on 15 December 2023.
The elections were held following two years of political unrest after Prime Minister Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was removed from office by a no-confidence motion. Subsequently, Khan was arrested and convicted for corruption and barred from politics for five years. In the run-up to the elections, a Supreme Court ruling stripped the PTI of their electoral symbol for failing to hold intra-party elections for years.
In the final election results, independent candidates ended up winning 103 general seats including 93 backed by the PTI, followed by 75 from the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) and 54 from the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). In Punjab and Sindh provinces, the PML-N and the PPP respectively emerged as the largest parties. Independent candidates backed by the PTI won the most number of seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while Balochistan voted for the PPP and the PML-N as the largest parties. Later all parties except the PTI were given reserved seats for women and minorities.
The military establishment was widely accused of rigging the elections in favour of the PML-N's leader Nawaz Sharif to keep Khan out of the electoral race. Observer groups and members of the international community, including the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union, have voiced their concerns about the fairness of the elections, while media outlets around the world cast widespread doubt on the veracity of the results.
PTI chair Gohar Ali Khan alleged election rigging and claimed that the party had won 180 National Assembly seats as per provisional election results. PTI-backed independent candidates did not secure a majority, but they managed to win more seats than any other single party, despite their leader Imran Khan being in jail. Khan also cited alleged election rigging, and declined to forge alliances with other parties to establish a coalition government and instead opted to assume an opposition role in parliament.
At a press conference on 13 February 2024, it was announced by the leaders of the PML-N and the PPP that they would form a coalition government with the PML-N's Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement – Pakistan (MQM-P), the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (PML-Q), the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP) and the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) also expressed their intent to join the governmental coalition. On 3 March, Shehbaz Sharif was elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan for the second time, securing 201 votes against the 92 votes received by the PTI-backed Omar Ayub Khan. With no party securing a majority in the assembly, Shehbaz became prime minister with support from the PML-N's allies, including the PPP, MQM-P, PML-Q, BAP, IPP and other smaller parties.
Background 2018 elections
General elections were held in Pakistan on 25 July 2018 after the completion of a five-year term by the outgoing government. At the national level, elections were held in 272 constituencies, each electing one member to the National Assembly. At the provincial level, elections were held in each of the four provinces to elect Members of the Provincial Assemblies (MPA).
As a result of the elections, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) became the single largest party at the national level in terms of both popular vote and seats. At the provincial level, the PTI remained the largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) remained the largest party in Sindh and the newly-formed Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) became the largest party in Balochistan. In Punjab, a hung parliament prevailed with Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) emerging as the largest party in terms of directly elected seats by a narrow margin. However, following the support of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) and the joining of independent MPAs into the PTI, the latter became the largest party and was able to form the government.
2022 constitutional crisis
On 8 March 2022 the opposition parties, under the banner of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), submitted a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Imran Khan to the National Assembly's secretariat. On 27 March 2022, Khan waved a diplomatic cypher from US in the public, claiming that it demanded the removal of Khan's government in a coup. Later he changed his stance about the US conspiracy against his government, in an effort to mend ties with the country. However, in August 2023, The Intercept claimed to have published the contents of the diplomatic cable which had American diplomat Donald Lu on record as stating that "all will be forgiven" concerning the country's neutrality in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, if the no-confidence motion against Khan were to succeed. After the election, JUI-F president Fazal-ur-Rehman, a critic of Imran Khan, claimed that the motion of no-confidence to remove Khan was introduced on the instructions of former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.
On 1 April 2022, Prime Minister Khan announced that in the context of the no-confidence motion against him in the National Assembly, the three options were discussed with "establishment" to choose from viz: "resignation, no-confidence [vote] or elections". On 3 April 2022, President Arif Alvi dissolved the National Assembly of Pakistan on Khan's advice after the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly rejected and set-aside the motion of no confidence; this move would have required elections to the National Assembly to be held within 90 days. On 10 April, after a Supreme Court ruling that the no-confidence motion was illegally rejected, a no-confidence vote was conducted and he was ousted from office, becoming the first prime minister in Pakistan to be removed from office by a vote of no confidence. Khan claimed the United States was behind his removal because he conducted an independent foreign policy and had friendly relations with China and Russia. His removal led to protests from his supporters across Pakistan.
PDM government After the success of the no-confidence motion, on 11 April 2022 Shehbaz Sharif became the Prime Minister after receiving 174 votes out of a total of 342, two more than the required majority with the support of the Pakistan People's Party, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and various smaller parties under the coalition of the PDM. Dissident members of PTI also supported his candidature. Meanwhile, the remaining PTI members, who were now in the opposition, boycotted the session terming it a continuation of a "foreign conspiracy". A day later, over 100 PTI members tendered resignations from their National Assembly seats.
The PDM government remained in power until 10 August 2023. Sharif's tenure was marked by historically high inflation, contraction of the national economy, and a record devaluation of the Pakistani rupee.
Assassination attempt on Imran Khan and his subsequent arrest
Following its ouster from the government, PTI continued to enjoy mass popularity with its supporters taking to the streets across the country. In July 2022, during a provincial by-election in Punjab, the party had a landslide victory after winning 15 of the 20 seats. During October 2022 by-elections conducted for the National Assembly, the party won 7 out of 9 seats with Khan winning 6 of the 7 seats he was contesting for. Later in the year, Khan himself led a well-attended march of protest throughout the populous province of Punjab, to force an early general election. However, on 3 November 2022, while he was leading the march through Wazirabad, he was shot at and injured in an attempted assassination.
As Khan was recovering from the gunshot wounds to his leg, the government registered several cases against him and attempted to arrest him from his home in Zaman Park on two different occasions during March 2023. Each time the police were unable to arrest him as his supporters intervened. Then on 9 May 2023, he was violently arrested by paramilitary forces while marking his attendance at Islamabad High Court in a corruption case. The arrest came a day after the country's army warned him for accusing a high-ranking member of the ISI, Major General Faisal Naseer, of being responsible for the assassination attempt in November 2022. Nationwide violence followed, in what were termed as the May 9 riots, with some demonstrators targeting military installations. Following the events, a crackdown was initiated against the party by the country's military establishment. PTI leaders, party workers, and supporters, as well as those perceived to be allied to the party's cause within the media and legal profession, were targeted. Trials of civilians within military courts were also initiated. Several core leaders of the party have been in hiding since, with many incarcerated or forced to abandon the party. Subsequently, two pro-establishment splinter groups emerged from within the PTI, namely the PTI Parliamentarians (PTI-P), led by Pervez Khattak, and the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party (IPP), led by Jahangir Tareen.
On 16 February 2024, former Secretary of Defense Naeem Khalid Lodhi claimed that the military establishment had indirectly contacted Imran Khan in which Khan was reportedly asked to admit responsibility and apologize for planning the May 9 riots and assure that such actions would not be repeated in the future. However, according to Lodhi, no resolution came from these interactions.
Schedule controversies In January 2023, in a bid to force early general elections, the PTI prematurely dissolved the provincial assemblies it was in power in – namely Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. According to the constitution of Pakistan, after the dissolution of an assembly, elections are supposed to be held there within 90 days, thus, constitutionally limiting the date for the two provincial elections to be no later than April 2023. However, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) delayed the elections to October 2023, citing lack of funds provided by the PDM government and the unavailability of the required security personnel. The PTI approached the Supreme Court of Pakistan against the electoral body's decision, terming it a violation of the constitution, and with a majority verdict the court declared the ECP's earlier ruling as unconstitutional and ordered it to hold elections by 14 May 2023. After the nationwide May 9 riots that broke out following Imran Khan's arrest – the election date passed without the Supreme Court order being enforced. On 30 May, after the passage of a new law, the PDM government filed a review petition against the court's earlier ruling.
On 10 August 2023, the National Assembly was prematurely dissolved by the President Arif Alvi on the advice of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. This meant that the election must be held no later than 8 November 2023. However, on 5 August 2023, the results of the 2023 digital census were approved by the Council of Common Interests headed by Shehbaz Sharif. Therefore, elections were to be delayed to February 2024 at the latest, as announced by the ECP in order to carry out fresh electoral delimitations in light of the approved census results. Despite that, on 13 September 2023, President Alvi proposed 6 November 2023 as a date to the ECP and advised it to seek guidance from the Supreme Court for the announcement of the election date. On 2 November 2023, the ECP and the President agreed on 8 February 2024 as the date for the general election.
Return of Nawaz Sharif to electoral politics