Pakistan ex-PM’s party loses election symbol. Will it hurt its prospects?

Besides making voting accessible to voters who are unable to read, electoral symbols form the basis of party campaigns.

Electoral symbols play an important role in a democratic process. As Pakistan gears up for general elections due next month, posters with party symbols can be seen plastered on utility poles and roadside walls across cities and towns.

Political parties have kicked off campaigning, plastering walls with propaganda posters but the symbol of what many believe is the country’s most popular party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), seems to be missing, thanks to an unprecedented crackdown on the PTI and its jailed leader, former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s party has been barred from using the party symbol in the elections scheduled for February 8.

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

Meanwhile, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, has also alleged that seven of his party’s national and provincial assembly candidates have being assigned the wrong electoral symbols in the eastern Punjab province. Bhutto claimed the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) acted under pressure from former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been accused of cutting a deal with the country’s military that controls most levers of power from behind the scenes. Sharif, who returned to Pakistan in October after several years of self-imposed exile, has rejected the allegations.

So why are party symbols important, and will the ban on the PTI symbol harm the party?