ISLAMABAD: Religious parties become the topic of discussion around election time and in today’s scenario ‘the existing right-wing parties feel threatened from the extreme right wing, which has fielded a massive number of contenders for various seats at both the provincial and national level’, a local media house reported.
It all began with the emergence of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) in 2002 elections when they managed to bag a good number of seats in both the national and provincial assemblies of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan.
The conglomerate comprised Jamaat-e-Islami led by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP) led by Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani and Tehreek-e-Jafaria led by Allama Sajid Naqvi. Having said that, the parties and leaders were involved in politics from the pre-partition era, the local media house reported.
However, in the aftermath of 9/11 religious parties banded together to form an alliance and rearranging the political landscape.
In 2008, the unity among these religious parties had deteriorated when JI decided to boycott the elections and JUI-F participated in the polls. With futile attempts to revive the alliance, it failed. However, most of the ‘original members’ united into an integrated MMA.
“Besides others, a major reason for this merger is the entry of sectarian actors into the political theatre,” the local media report stated.
Even now, the new candidates managed to form shadow parties like the Pakistan Rah-e-Haq Party (PRHP) emerged from Sipa-e-Sahaba party and Allah-o-Akbar-Tehreek came to the fore as a shadow party of the Hafiz Saeed-led Jamatud Dawa, and Maulvi Khadim Rizvi’s Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan (TLP). They have planted more candidates than the MMA combined.
“MMA has nominated a total of 192 candidates for the 272 directly elected constituencies of the National Assembly while TLP alone has fielded 178 contenders for the same.”
MMA focuses more on the KP and Balochistan areas, whereas, TLP eyes seats from Punjab where it has nominated 141 contestants with another 32 from Sindh, 16 from KP and six from Balochistan.
“The history of religious parties dates back to before the creation of Pakistan. The two leading religious scholars of the pre-partition time, Maulana Maududi and Maulana Azad were among religious figures who opposed the idea of the creation of Pakistan. After the creation of Pakistan, religious parties relied on religiously motivated slogans; used the religious card to mobilise people on the street and soon became pressure groups,” the report said.
The rise of sectarianism and sectarian organisations was one of the corollaries of the Afghan war. The Sipahs and Lashkars came into being and in areas which had been epicentres of dogmatic movements; sectarian outfits became stronger, sidelining conventional religious parties. These new entries exploited sectarian divide to gain popular support.
Looking back towards the culmination of the PML-N government, sectarian organisations were seen exerting pressure on the government, raising issues like sensitive blasphemy laws through street mobilisation and sit-ins. Organisations like TLP are now cashing in on the same factional appeal they gained during these protests to materialise it as an electoral success.
The report also stated that the rise of sectarian groups can be for three main reasons, “divide the vote bank of mainstream parties, create space for these outfits and later use them as pressure groups”.