President Arif Alvi’s writing to the caretaker Prime Minister about the Pakistan Tehrik Insaf’s concerns about a level playing field for the coming elections sems more posturing than designed to achieve any result. President Alvi has tried to be the PTI’s sole representative in the corridors of power ever since the fall of the PTI government in April 2021, and this letter seems more of the same, designed to show to the party cadres that President Alvi has remained loyal to the party, rather than achieve anything. If he had really wanted to achieve anything, he would have done better to write to the Election Commission of Pakistan, so that it would then instruct the Caretaker President to take any necessary steps. In fact, some of the concerns expressed have to do with the provincial governments. Addressing the ECP would mean that all caretaker governments could be addressed by it.
Another problem with the President’s letter was that it probably did not go far enough. Mostly, they have to do with the fact that the PTI leadership is facing a crackdown for the attack on military installations on May 9, and its leadership is now behind bars. That implies judicial action rather than executive. All governments can do is not register cases, or not press prosecutions in cases already registered. Otherwise, the law will take its course. It is not as if the President’s objections are groundless. The PTI is facing the sort of pre-poll rigging that the PML(N) did in 2018, a process which started a year before, with the ouster of Mian Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister.
President Alvi does not seem to have taken account of this in his letter, which is probably going to be why it is not going to have much effect. Without a confession of some sort, there will not be an end to the practice of pre-poll rigging, in which it is made clearly long before polls are held, what kind of results are acceptable. The problem is that no such confession is possible without an end to interference. As long as there is some hope of winning outside intervention on its own side, no party is likely to act to end interference. President Alvi’s letter does not seem to achieve this, nor even its minimum objective, that of achieving relevance for himself.
