Being one of a large number of the so-called `fringe` parties smaller groups and outfits in the national political spectrum with a small share of the electorate, operating in the `ideological niches` left untended by mainstream parties has both its advantages and pitfalls.

It can be exciting if these parties gain enough public support among their targeted segments of society to influence and set the agenda for the bigger mainstream parties, as well as change the course of social and political discourse in the country, in spite of their small size.

That`s not all. These fringe groups can `spoil` and significantly alter the election outcomes for a mainstream party much bigger in size but with a similar ideology and programme by drawing votes away from the candidates who otherwise could have won. In this, it does not matter how slim these `spoiler` parties` own chances of winning a seat or two in the polls may be.

Or these fringe parties may be wooed by another larger party into an alliance, to turn the tables on the potential favourites. We have had plenty of instances in election cycles since 1988 where such outfits have spoiled the electoral chances of a mainstream player by running independently, or by forging an alliance with others.

In the most recent instance, in 2018, the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (T LP) is estimated by political analysts to have cost the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) at least 15 closely contested national seats across Pakistan.

However, it can be frustrating for the supporters of such parties, since these fringe parties mostly fail to consolidate their `popularity` and their electoral gains if any to grow bigger and transform themselves into mainstream, regional or national, parties, barring the examples of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM).Mainstream parties often `electorally squeeze` these fringe groups by attracting their natural constituencies by co-opting their narrow agenda.

Take the example of Allama Tahirul Qadri`s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), which opted out of the 2018 elections following several attempts since 2002 to attract a following.

EXISTING ON THE PERIPHERY It is hard to say how such parties emerge and sustain themselves owing to the lack of research on these parties and groups. But Mohammad Badar Alam, a senior journalist and political commentator, argues that such parties emerge because of certain extraordinary circumstances or events.

`Generally, these parties have a single point agenda the promotion of some religious, social, economic and ethnic cause and they are not concerned with mainstream politics but are instead interested in a fringe issue,` he points out. `In some election cycles, that fringe issue becomes so salient that these parties gather a lot of support from voters. But once that issue disappears, their electoral support also decreases dramatically.

Alam further explains, `In both the previous and the upcoming elections, the TLP has been a fringe party. When the MQM first appeared on the political scene, it was a fringe party. Its subsequent electoral success brought it into power and its character started changing. The Sipah-i-Sahaba [SSP] and its various versions have also been fringe parties.

To Alam, words such as tehreek or movement in a political party`s name signify a fringe phenomenon. According to him, `The MQM is a movement, the TLP is a tehreek. Likewise, the National Democratic Movement (NDM) is a movement. So is the Haqooq-i-Khalq Movement.

This is because they all have, or had, a narrow agenda that could attract and radicalise a certain section of society. On the other hand, you need a larger political vision to be a political party that can get votes from many, if not all, sections of society.

Analysts agree that fringe parties may also develop into a mainstream phenomenon, though only in rare cases. One major example of this is the PTI, which started off as a movement for insaf [justice] and has since broadened its appeal by campaigning on anti-corruption and anti-West sentiments, with dollops of middle class conservatism and religiosity, as personified by its founder Imran Khan.

Alam says, `The other example is the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) that chose as far back as the 1950s to be a political party with a wider agenda rather than a movement for an Islamic renaissance, as its counterpart in Egypt, the Islamic Brotherhood, still wants to be, with branches in various parts of the Muslim world outside its birthplace.` The MQM is yet another example, but to a lesser extent.

Zaigham Khan, a political analyst based in Islamabad, has a slightly different take on the fringe phenomenon.

He thinks that defining fringe parties can be tricky and argues that, `There are religious parties or class-based ideological political outfits or ethnic parties that often aspire to become mainstream regional and national parties. There can be several reasons for the emergence of such parties.

According to him, the break-up of larger parties often creates fringe parties. He explains, `For example, in 1970, the Muslim League had three factions the Council League, the Qayyum League and the Convention League contesting the elections. Their combined vote count was over 20 percent [of the votes polled]. Later on, these merged into one.

`So political parties keep splitting up and reuniting.

Some fail to survive and disappear from the scene. This process is also common among religious and regional parties. Sometimes, a few ambitious political aspirants form their own parties. The left-leaning smaller parties are one such example. Individuals like Sheikh Rasheed with significant votes concentrated in one area or constituency may also form a party it helps them in becoming part of a government or a political coalition or electoral alliance [to work for a common agenda or exert pressure on the ruling party].

SPOILING THE PARTY? Political analysts are in agreement over the spoiler role fringe parties play in the electoral outcome for the mainstream parties.

An Islamabad-based researcher, who wants to stay anonymous as he works for an organisation currently monitoring the upcoming February 8 polls, maintains, `When they are at the peak of their popularity, these fringe parties massively undercut the support of mainstream parties. For instance, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan [SSP] dominated Jhang`s electoral politics between 1988 and 1993. But then it started fizzling out and traditional politicians and mainstream politicians made their way back in the electoral arena.

`Similarly, the TLP managed to get more votes than the Pakistan Peoples Party [PPP] in Punjab in the 2018 elections and altered the electoral results in 21 national seats across Pakistan, mostly in favour of the PTI and against the PML-N.

There are many who maintain that most fringe parties are created at the behest of and sustained by the powerful intelligence agencies, with a view to `engineering electoral outcomes.

The Islamabad-based researcher adds, `The invisible hand behind the formation of different spoiler groups is not so invisible. I know that, you know that, everyone knows that. Even when the agencies aren`t involved in the creation of these vote-cutting, spoiler parties, they readily co-opt them if they find potential in them. Many such groups readily embrace the intelligence agencies to advance their agenda.

Alam agrees with this. `Our state institutions, too, sometimes encourage the formation of some parties such as the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid [PML-Q] or the Istehkam-i-Pakistan Party [IPP] in order to cut a certain mainstream party down to size. Seen this way, the IPP is an important fringe party in the upcoming elections. The TLP is another important fringe party in these polls.

However, Alam believes that the fringe parties have an oversized role that is much larger than their electoral achievements. According to him, `Often, they successfully radicalise a big section of society that sometimes also becomes violent. In order to overcome their violence, the state co-opts and controls them alternately and, thus, ends up conceding to many of their demands. Mainstream political parties, too, make electoral alliances with them sometimes, and thereby accommodate their agendas in their own manifestos and policies.

Zaigham largely concurs: `These smaller or fringe parties do enjoy political innuence that can be supportive for mainstream parties and it can also be of a vote splitter for the mainstream parties. Though religious parties have a significant vote bank, it is largely scattered. Hence, they cannot have innuence according to their vote size. However, when they join bigger parties, they can have a greater degree of innuence.

`For example, when these groups joined the Pakistan Muslim League in the late 1980s to form the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad [IJI], they emerged as a formidable alliance together. In 2013, a chunk of the religious vote separated itself from the Noon League, and the TLP emerged later and attacked PML-N to weaken and damage it in the 2018 polls.

Smaller parties, Zaigham says, have a pressure group role. The TLP is innuencing governance and foreign policy, and has emerged as a vigilante group that has innuence from the local to the national level due to its ideological make-up and agenda.

FILLING A VACUUM With the much-anticipated February elections approaching fast and the PTI effectively thrown out of the race deprived as it has been of its election symbol the question is being asked about the relevance and the role of the fringe or spoiler groups in 2024.

Do the powers that be still require groups like the TLP for splitting votes, with PTI candidates contesting as independent candidates and challenging those from the PML-N and others in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa? `The [exclusion of] the PTI has created a big political vacuum now,` accepts Zaigham. `It has to be seen how it affects the fortunes of the smaller political parties.

What will be most interesting is how it impacts the T LP in Punjab. I think the disgruntled PTI voters can vote for the T LP, since they will never align themselves with the League or the PPP.

`In recent years, the PTI has attracted a significant number of low-income supporters. Since the TLP is a disruptive, angry party and has many common features with the PTI and I call it the PTI of the poor they are likely to be attracted to it. However, I don`t think the T LP is now being used by the establishment in the way it was during the last elections, because the strategy has changed.

`Only mainstream parties are being supported and roadblocks in their way are being dismantled. At least in Punjab, they do not need to work hard or use them [TLP] to secure the required results or outcome on February 8,` he posits.

Alam also doesn`t think that the fringe parties would be as relevant in 2024 as the TLP was in 2018. `The TLP itself no longer enjoys the coming together of various factors that worked to its benefit in 2018,` he explains. `For instance, its agitation activities were at their highest at that time, its founder was still alive, the Barelvi voters rallied behind it in an unprecedented way, and it successfully made some smart electoral alliances with candidates who did not wholly agree with its agenda but had significant voter support in their constituencies. This time around, all these factors are missing from its campaign.

`Most importantly, the Barelvi voters in Punjab are not as united as they were in Punjab in 2018 because the TLP has veered closer to the SSP in its religious leanings. As far as the IPP is concerned, it has failed to take off, despite enjoying the establishment`s support.

With Nawaz Sharif having gained the patronage of the establishment, its reason for coming into being has become redundant.

Despite all this, Alam believes the TLP could still be a major player in Karachi. `Given MQM`s political decline and with the electoral difficulties being faced by the PTI, most mohajir voters there might vote for religious parties, like the TLP,` he suggests.

`While the middle class mohajir vote might land in JI`s ballot boxes, the mohajir working class could vote for the TLP. This was also the case in the 2018 elections, when a large number of the mohajir working class voters in districts Central, East, Korangi and South voted for the TLP, electing two of its candidates to the Sindh Assembly.

THE TLP: A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH The TLP was considered a spoiler before the 2018 elections. But it surprised many by polling nearly 2.2 million votes, mostly from Punjab and Karachi.

Needless to say, it severely impacted the prospects of the Noon League in 15 closely contested National Assembly constituencies, with the PTI being the other major party that lost on six seats due to the spoiler`s vote-cutting ability.

With the next elections less than three weeks away, the TLP would be the most interesting `fringe party` to watch. The question is: will the party be able to reshape itself from a fringe spoiler group a party formed to draw votes away from major mainstream parties to spoil their chances of winning an election into a major political party, by building on its initial electoral success? After all, the party didn`t just play a spoiler role but also won two Sindh Assembly seats from Karachi and emerged as a contender for at least one national seat from Nankana Sahib, where its candidate had polled a little over 49,300 votes against PTI`s 63,818 and Noon`s 61,413. Its contestants were also the runner-ups on three National Assembly seats NA 240, 246 and 247 from Karachi.

The T LP, an extremist Sunni Islamist group, was formed in 2015 out of a protest campaign seeking the release of Mumtaz Qadri, a police constable who had assassinated the former governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, in 2011 over his calls to reform the blasphemy laws and release Asia Bibi who had been accused of blasphemy. Qadri was later executed. The group founded a political party at Qadri`s funeral in 2016, which was attended by thousands of people.

An analysis of the T LP`s electoral performance done by Rashid Chaudhry, an Islamabad-based development professional with research interests in elections, democracy and governance, shows that the number of votes the party received in 2018 was `unprecedented for any first-timer religious party`, even though the tally didn`t get it many seats.

Punjab, according to Chaudhry, turned out to be a stronghold of the TLP in terms of number of votes. Four out of every five votes polled by the party came from Punjab alone. Karachi was to prove to be the other major electoral support base for the party.

The party bagged 4.1 percent of the total valid votes polled in the elections. This means that the party got every 25th polled vote in the National Assembly elections. Its candidates were the runnerups on three national seats in Karachi and were ranked third in 69 other constituencies nine in Karachi, one in Khairpur, Sindh, 58 across Punjab and one in Haripur, KP.

It finished third in the running for the Punjab Assembly on the basis of the votes it had polled, surpassing the PPP. Chaudhry noted in an oped published in Dawn, `This is an extraordinary performance when compared with other parties. The PPP, for example, won six National Assembly seats in Punjab, remained the runner-up for another six, while its candidates placed third on just 27 National Assembly seats.

BEYOND THE ONE POINT AGENDA The 2018 election results for the TLP underscored the presence of a strong support base among the lower middle income, working urban classes in Punjab and Karachi. The T LP leadership itself comes largely from the lower-middle class.

However, most analysts remain sceptical of its capacity to repeat its 2018 performance next month, let alone improve upon it, especially when the country`s security establishment is clearly favouring a mainstream party to keep the PTI out of the assemblies.

The major impediment to the TLP becoming a larger political party, according to political analysts, is its single-point narrow agenda, which focuses on protecting the country`s blasphemy laws and punishing blasphemers.

A retired Punjab University political science professor who requests anonymity, argues, `The TLP essentially remains a niche party, because you need to have a larger political vision and programme to woo voters from different sections of society and from across the country, in order to reshape yourself as a mainstream political party. The single-point agenda might mobilise part of a certain segment of society but not the others. It will not be easy for the T LP to change itself and break loose from its moorings.

Apparently, the TLP leadership realises this but is unable to break away from its core agenda. Its 25-point election manifesto, launched earlier this month, has tried to `broaden` the party message, assuring protection of the rights of women and religious minorities as per the Constitution, devolution of power to the union council level, and the extension of all possible support to the oppressed Muslims of Kashmir and Palestine.

A TLP leader, Pir Inayat, was recently quoted in Dawn as saying, `Certain elements [are] hatching a conspiracy against the TLP by labelling it as a group that is involved in emotionalism and capitalises on faith.` Perhaps, as the political science professor says, the group can go only as far to win its acceptance out of the party`s core support base that has thrived on its mobilisation of violent crowds on blasphemy issues, sectarianism and against religious minorities since its inception in 2016.

Some, like Zaigham, think the T LP could be the first port of call for angry PTI voters who, if they are not allowed to vote for their party, might choose this ultra right group on the polling day. However, that seems more improbable than the TLP embracing a broader and inclusive political agenda at this moment in time.

The writer is Dawn`s Lahore Bureau Chief