1990 Pakistani general election

Pakistan General Elections, 1990

October 24, 1990 (1990-10-24)
All 207 seats contested 104 seats seats needed for a majority
Turnout	45.5%
First party Second party   Leader Nawaz Sharif Benazir Bhutto Party IDA PPP Leader since 1988 1982 Leader's seat Lahore Larkana Last election 55, 30.2% 94, 38.5% Seats before 55 94 Seats after 111 44 Seat change 56 50 Popular vote 7,908,513 7,795,218 Percentage 37.4% 36.8% Swing 7.2% 1.7%
Prime minister before election Benazir Bhutto PPP Elected Prime minister Nawaz Sharif IDA

The Pakistan General elections, 1990 took place on 24 October 1990 to elect 217 MPs to the Pakistan Parliament, and resulted in surprise victory of Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA), a massive conservative front led under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif. The IDA compete for the Prime minister secretariat and initially campaign on privatization and national conservative polices, meanwhile the MQM, a liberal front, led under Altaf Hussain tightened its support in Sindh Province. The result was a victory for Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, which won 106 of the 207 seats. Voter turnout was 45.5%. On October 19, 2012 the Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled on the 'Asghar Khan Petition' – a petition by Retd. Air Marshal Asghar Khan, heading up the Tehreek-i-Insaaf Party, requesting the court to probe into allegations that the 1990 elections were rigged. The court officially ruled that two Army Generals – Mirza Aslam Baig and Asad Durrani (Head of the ISI) – along with President Ghulam Ishaq Khan provided financial assistance to favoured parties. The motive, as was decreed by the SC, was to deliberately weaken the mandate of the Pakistan Peoples Party. It was believed that the PPP, led by Benazir Bhutto, was a liability to the nation.

Background

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) led by Benazir Bhutto won a plurality of seats in the 1988 election and Bhutto became Prime Minister. However by 1990 there was discontent over rising lawlessness, allegations of corruption and the failure of the government to fulfill the promises it had made during the 1988 campaign.

Parties

The PPP ran in the election in a coalition with 3 smaller parties as the People's Democratic Alliance.

Campaign

By the start of the campaign reports suggested that Bhutto and the PDA were in a stronger position as the caretaker government failed to produce sufficient evidence to prove any charges against her.

At the end of the campaign Bhutto led hundreds of thousands of supporters in a procession in Lahore, while Sharif held a rally for about ten thousand nearby.

Results

The outgoing party, the PPP/PDA, lost the elections. IJI won the popular vote by a very narrow margin of only around 100,000 votes, but the narrow victory in the popular vote translated into 106 seats for IJI against the PDA's 44 seats. The popular argument regarding PDA's huge loss of seats is that the PDA's vote, despite being almost equal to that of IJI, was much more spread out whereas IJI's vote bank was more concentrated. This resulted in PDA candidates losing in IJI won seats by narrow margins.

Parties	Votes	%	Seats	+/–
Islami Jamhoori Ittehad	7,908,513	37.4	106	+50
People's Democratic Alliance	7,795,218	36.8	44	New
Haq Parast	1,172,525	5.5	15	New
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam	622,214	2.9	6	–1
Awami National Party	356,160	1.7	6	+4
Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (Noorani)	310,953	1.5	3	New
Pakistan Awami Tehrik	237,492	1.1	0	New
Jamhoori Wattan Party	129,431	0.6	2	New
Pakistan National Party	127,287	0.6	2	+2
Pakhtun-khwa Milli Awami Party	73,635	0.3	1	New
Sindh National Front	51,990	0.2	0	New
Pakistan Democratic Party	51,645	0.2	0	0
Balochistan National Movement	51,297	0.2	0	New
Sindh National Alliance (Hamid Jatioi)	31,125	0.1	0	New
13 other parties	64,470	0.3	0	–
Independents	2,179,956	10.3	22	–18
Invalid/blank votes	231,568	–	–	–
Total	21,395,479	100	207	0
Source: Nohlen et al.