Election symbols play an important role in a democratic process. Pakistan is preparing for this general elections Next month, posters with party symbols can be seen on electricity poles and street walls in cities and towns.

Political parties have started campaigning and plastered walls with propaganda postersThe symbol of what many consider to be the country’s most popular party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), appears to be missing due to an unprecedented crackdown on the PTI its imprisoned leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s party was blocked from the use of the party symbol in the elections scheduled for February 8th.

PTI members and supporters say the blocking of their symbol, a cricket bat, is a military-backed ploy Interim government to ensure the party’s defeat.

Meanwhile, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also claimed that seven candidates of his party for the national and provincial assemblies in the eastern province of Punjab were given wrong election symbols. Bhutto claimed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) acted under pressure from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was accused of cutting a deal with the country’s military, which controls most levers of power behind the scenes. Sharif, who returned to Pakistan in October after several years of self-imposed exile, denied the allegations.

Why are party symbols important and banning the PTI symbol will harm the party?

Why did PTI lose its bat?

The ECP on December 22 renounced the PTI’s bat symbol on the technical grounds that the party had not held internal elections – required by law. This made it impossible for the party to have a symbol for the 2024 elections.

An intra-party election conducted by the PTI on June 8, 2022 was not recognized by the ECP on the grounds that it was not “just and fair”. The ECP also issued similar orders against 13 marginal political parties.

Critics and supporters of the PTI believe it is a deliberate attempt to diminish the party’s electoral success. “The cricket bat was wrongfully confiscated through an illegal order,” PTI lawyer Syed Ali Zafar said.

An attempt by the PTI to overturn the ban failed as Pakistan’s Supreme Court last week upheld the Election Commission’s decision, which is significant for the PTI because it commemorates Khan’s success as a former cricketer.

Khan, who was captain of the national team when the country achieved its only victory 1992 World Cup Cupused his successful sports career to gain popular support as a politician.

Arif Rafiq, president of Vizier Consulting, a New York-based political risk consultancy, said the decision to block the PTI symbol was “politically motivated”.

“They are part of a pattern of the Pakistani state using administrative measures and coercion to block the PTI’s path to electoral victory,” he said, pointing to Khan’s wide popularity.

Nadia Malik, head of Geo Television’s polling cell, says intra-party elections in Pakistan are a farce but the ECP has failed to hold other parties accountable and let them go scot-free.

“Losing a symbol is nothing new in Pakistan, but PTI cannot even choose a different symbol for all its candidates” as the deadline for doing so has passed, Malik told Al Jazeera.

The ECP has defended its decision, saying that if the process of symbol change continues, the elections would be further delayed.

To address the resulting confusion, the party’s social media team is working on a portal that will allow voters to search for names and symbols of PTI candidates, Malik added. “PTI is really good at socializing in this way.”

But one in two Pakistanis does not own a smartphone, making it difficult for the PTI to reach voters.

“The end result of the ECP’s decision and the ridiculous confirmation by the Supreme Court is the disenfranchisement of millions of voters and the liquidation of the country’s largest party ahead of the elections,” Asad Rahim Khan, a constitutional expert, said.

“Flaws in intra-party elections deserve such disproportionate punishment nowhere in the law. The Pakistani constitution and clearly developed jurisprudence also favor political parties and their right to vote.”

The PTI social media team has created a portal to search candidate names and symbols. Watch the video below showing a search for “NA1” and the results with candidate name and symbol. We’re just waiting for the data for each contestant before we go LIVE! #Challenge accepted #Prime MinisterImranKhan pic.twitter.com/BhI4bOfIfJ

– PTI (@PTIofficial) January 14, 2024

The story behind the PTI racket

The quirky cricket bat symbol has a pervasive connection to Khan’s party. However, the bat was not the party’s first symbol.

Geo TV’s Malik said the party’s first symbol was a lamp.

Before the 2013 elections, the PTI wanted to use double scales as an election symbol because it is the symbol of justice and “Insaf” roughly means “justice” in Urdu. However, in the 1970 general elections, the scales were the symbol of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. The legal battle between the two parties over the symbol ultimately fell in favor of Jamaat-e-Islami due to its historical claim.

After the 1977 general elections, the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq removed several election symbols from the approved list of symbols, including the scales. These were restored by ECP in 2010.

Why are election symbols important?

The symbols, which look like minimalist line drawings, are very popular in Pakistan.

Malik, the GEO journalist, pointed out that about 40 percent of Pakistan’s population is uneducated and that voters who cannot read rely on symbols on the ballot paper to identify the party they want to vote for. “Even people who can read names don’t always get that involved in the election campaign, but they know their party’s symbol,” she said.

She added that the parties’ election campaign was built on their symbols, like slogans and songs.

For example, “Ballay ko diya kis nay sahara – Patel Para Patel Para” – which translated from Urdu means “Who supported the thug – Patel Para Patel Para” – was a slogan used by PTI to enlist the support of residents of Patel Para district wanted to collect in Karachi, accordingly analysis conducted by a faculty member of COMSATS University, Islamabad in 2020.

Similarly, Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) and Bhutto-Zardari’s PPP have also curated slogans and songs around their symbols in the past. PPP’s catchy anthem “Dilan teer bija” translates from Balotian as “An arrow to the heart” and may allude to the party’s arrow emblem.

The PML-N Tiger

The center-right PML-N party is strongly identified with the tiger symbol.

However, the Tiger has not always been associated with former Prime Minister Sharif’s party.

The party was preceded by the right-wing alliance Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), which used the bicycle as its emblem. Malik said PML-N was unable to use the bicycle symbol.

This began the party’s extensive use of the tiger, and images of lions and tigers became a central theme of the election campaign, as Sharif earned the title of “Lion of Punjab” among party supporters – after the province in which the PML-N has historically seen as the most dominant. The party even brought a rare white tiger to public appearances, which died in Lahore in 2013 due to the sweltering heat.

In 2017, the PML-N found itself in almost a similar situation as the PTI is now. Its tiger symbol was suspended because it failed to elect a new party leader after Sharif was sacked as prime minister over his involvement in the Panama Papers scandal. But the Election Commission reversed its decision after PML-N elected a new leader.

A sword and an arrow – the story of a people’s party

The symbol of the social democratic PPP in the 1970 election was a sword. A 2017 study by the faculty of the University of Punjab said that the party founder had died Zulfikar Ali Bhuttochose the sword as a reference to Zulfikar, the sword of Ali bin Abi Taleb, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law and the fourth caliph.

This appeal to religious sentiments came after Bhutto was accused of being anti-Islam for founding a socialist party.

The sword has been removed from approved symbols Zia-ul-Haqwhich leads to PPP with the arrow.

However, in 2018, Bhutto’s grandson Bhutto-Zardari won a legal battle against a breakaway PPP faction to get the sword back. This means that the sword will not be assigned to any other party.

For this election cycle, the PPP’s symbol remains the arrow.

Balloons, brooms, porpoises

Apart from the three main parties PTI, PML-N and PPP, 145 other parties are also in the fray, using symbols ranging from brooms to wristwatches.

The Pasban Democratic Party initially wanted a grass broom as the party emblem to symbolize the eradication of corruption in the country, but had to opt for balloons instead, the Express Tribune reported.

Instead, the broom went to the Pakistani Awami Raj party, which fights on the basis of solidarity with the working class and in protest against feudalism.

Meanwhile, the ECP has offered symbols up for grabs including the Air Conditioner, Caramel Board, Freezer and Bottlenose Dolphin.