Pakistani Kashmir: ruling party wins amid boycotts and suppressed protests

The regional elections in Pakistan-administered Kashmir have closed with a result that, on paper, appears clear-cut: candidates backed by the Pakistan Muslim League-N, the party led by Nawaz Sharif, won 24 of the 34 seats decided in the first two phases of voting, according to the election commission. It marks the party’s return to power in the region after ten years’ absence.

The numerical data, however, tells only part of the story. The vote took place amid a strike and boycott by a large part of the population of Muzaffarabad, the region’s capital, where residents questioned how the polls could go ahead after months of clashes that, according to local estimates, have caused at least 80 deaths since June. This is a figure circulated by local sources and not confirmed by independent institutional authorities: its actual scale therefore remains to be verified.

The protests are led by the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee, an organization banned by Islamabad, which is demanding a reform of electoral laws and greater economic concessions for a region that sees itself as marginalized relative to the central Pakistani government. The crackdown on demonstrations has turned what was meant to be a routine electoral process into a test of the resilience of the regional political system.

The contrast between the PML-N’s electoral victory and the refusal of significant segments of the population to take part in the vote raises a fundamental question about the representativeness of the result. A Muzaffarabad resident, Ahmer Gilani, summed up the meaning of the protest: “No government should shoot its own people”. The phrase captures the rift between the establishment governing the region from Islamabad and a portion of the citizenry that contests not only the way the vote was conducted but the institutional framework within which it takes place.

Pakistan-administered Kashmir occupies a delicate position in the subcontinent’s geopolitical architecture. Formally autonomous, it remains in fact under the close influence of the central Pakistani government, which through the PML-N is now also consolidating local political control. The JAAC’s demands remain limited, as far as can be established so far, to a reform of electoral laws and greater economic concessions, in a region that also remains at the center of the territorial dispute with India.

The PML-N’s return after a decade must be read alongside the backdrop of repression that accompanied the election campaign. A national party reclaiming a regional stronghold thanks to turnout undermined by the boycott does not resolve the underlying tensions; it simply shifts them to the next stage: the management of regional government amid widespread unrest and calls for reform that remain unaddressed.

The death toll from the protests, still unverified by independent institutional sources, remains the most urgent figure to clarify in order to assess the true scale of the crisis.