Faisal Karim Kundi lost his National Assembly contest in 2024. Within three months, he became governor. Two years later, emergency powers placed him at the centre of KP’s administration. His story raises questions about electoral accountability and coalition appointments.

A defeat in Dera Ismail Khan

On 8 February 2024, voters in Dera Ismail Khan went to the polls to elect their National Assembly representative. Three familiar politicians contested NA-44. Ali Amin Gandapur emerged victorious. Maulana Fazlur Rehman finished second. Faisal Karim Kundi, representing the Pakistan Peoples Party, came third.

According to Dawn’s provisional results, Gandapur received 93,443 votes. Fazlur Rehman secured 59,922, while Kundi received 35,567.

Kundi had lost again.

Yet on 4 May, less than three months after that election, he took the oath as governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. President Asif Ali Zardari had approved his appointment on Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s advice.

The voters had declined to elect Kundi as their National Assembly representative. Pakistan’s coalition government had found another public office for him.

By October 2026, that appointment carried consequences few voters could have anticipated in February 2024. President Zardari imposed Governor’s Rule in KP on 11 October, transferring specified provincial executive functions to an emergency administration headed by Kundi. Sohail Afridi, the elected chief minister, was subsequently detained.

The contrast has prompted an increasingly pointed argument: how can a politician with repeated electoral defeats exercise executive authority over a province whose elected government has been suspended?

The election record deserves examination. So does the system that placed Kundi in office.

How many elections did Kundi lose?

A graphic circulating on social media lists 12 constituency contests involving Faisal Karim Kundi between 2002 and 2024. It records one victory and 11 defeats. The broad pattern is supported by historical reporting and election compilations, although some individual entries still require reconciliation against the Election Commission’s original candidate returns.

His sole National Assembly victory came in 2008, when he won NA-24, Dera Ismail Khan. The National Assembly’s membership record confirms that Kundi represented the constituency from March 2008 until March 2013. He also served as Deputy Speaker.

In 2013, Kundi contested several seats. The Election Commission’s general-election report records 46,262 votes for him in NA-25, where Maulana Fazlur Rehman secured 77,595. Kundi also lost NA-24 and a provincial assembly contest. Another defeat followed in the NA-25 by-election.

He stood in multiple National and Provincial Assembly constituencies again in 2018 without securing a seat. His 2024 contest against Gandapur produced another defeat.

A candidate can contest several constituencies in one general election. Saying Kundi lost eleven separate general elections would therefore be inaccurate. Nor does the tally establish that every voter in KP rejected him. Constituency results measure support in particular areas, not among voters across the entire province. More than 35,000 voters supported him in NA-44 in 2024.

Nevertheless, the electoral record establishes something politically significant. His appointment as governor did not follow a recent electoral victory.

The appointment came from a coalition bargain

The document that explains Kundi’s governorship is not an election result. It is a government notification dated 4 May 2024.

The Cabinet Division’s appointment notification states that the President appointed Kundi under Article 101 of the Constitution, acting on the Prime Minister’s advice.

Contemporary reporting supplies the political context. On 5 May 2024, Dawn reported that governorship appointments in Punjab, KP and Balochistan followed a power-sharing arrangement between coalition parties. PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had nominated Kundi and Sardar Saleem Haider for governorships.

Kundi was a senior PPP figure and a former Deputy Speaker. His appointment followed the normal constitutional process. No law required him to win a popular election to hold the office.

What deserves scrutiny is the relationship between election results and coalition appointments.

Pakistan’s parties negotiate offices as part of forming governments. Coalition government often depends on compromise. But an appointment can be constitutionally valid while still raising questions about accountability. Why was a politician who had failed to win a National Assembly seat selected to represent the federation in a province governed by a rival party?

Did the coalition consider his parliamentary experience decisive? Did his position within the PPP matter more? Was the governorship primarily one element of the negotiated arrangement that sustained the federal government?

The power-sharing agreement is documented. The private reasoning of every official involved is not. There is no sound basis to present a political appointment as proof of an undisclosed personal reward.

What the Constitution actually says

Article 101 authorises the President to appoint a provincial governor on the Prime Minister’s advice. It sets eligibility requirements, but does not require the prospective governor to have won an election.

That is true of every governor in Pakistan, not merely Kundi. Governors and elected chief ministers occupy different constitutional roles. Under ordinary arrangements, elected provincial governments exercise executive authority while governors perform their constitutionally specified functions.

An electoral defeat does not permanently disqualify a politician from public service. The legal objection cannot simply be that President Zardari appointed someone who had lost at the polls.

The important question emerges when an appointed governor is directed to exercise extraordinary powers normally associated with the elected provincial administration.

When an appointed governor assumes executive functions

On 11 October 2026, the relationship between Islamabad and KP changed. President Zardari imposed emergency measures and Governor’s Rule, citing militant violence and alleged failures in counterterrorism cooperation.

Reuters reported the emergency and the government’s security justification. PTI disputed the allegations, describing the action as an attack on its mandate.

Authorities subsequently detained Chief Minister Sohail Afridi and other provincial political figures. An eleven-member advisory council was appointed to assist the governor.

The legal question is not resolved by Kundi’s personal election history. What evidence established that the province could no longer be governed through its ordinary constitutional institutions?

Article 234 permits federal intervention when constitutional machinery has failed. Political disagreements do not, by themselves, satisfy that test. The presidential proclamations, supporting reports and parliamentary review therefore matter more than speeches from either side.

Security concerns in KP are grave and cannot be brushed aside. Militancy has cost civilian and police lives. But the existence of a security crisis and the failure of constitutional government are not identical conclusions.

Is electoral defeat irrelevant after the votes are counted?

I find the distinction more revealing than an argument that politicians should never be appointed after losing elections.

Capable politicians sometimes lose. A constituency result does not measure every skill needed in public service. Kundi’s tenure as Deputy Speaker is relevant experience and should not be erased from his record.

But elected leaders and appointed governors face different forms of accountability. A chief minister depends upon an elected provincial assembly. Voters can eventually remove their representatives. A governor holds office through a federal appointment process and does not stand for a province-wide popular vote.

That difference becomes difficult to ignore when Governor’s Rule displaces the elected executive.

Voters may reasonably ask why an appointed political figure now performs functions normally exercised by a government formed through elections. Kundi’s defeats make the question more visible, but do not establish whether the emergency itself was lawful.

The president’s responsibility and the prime minister’s advice

Political debate often assigns responsibility for Kundi’s appointment to President Zardari alone. The documentary record is more precise.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif advised the appointment. Zardari approved it. Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari’s reported nomination of Kundi supplies the party context. Responsibility for the original selection sits within the constitutional process and the coalition agreement.

In May 2024 the question was who would occupy Governor House in Peshawar. In October 2026 it became who could exercise provincial executive authority while the elected administration was displaced.

An appointment made through coalition negotiations acquired a much greater consequence. That does not prove the emergency was anticipated when Kundi was selected.

The 18th Amendment and provincial autonomy

Pakistan’s 18th Constitutional Amendment, enacted in 2010, strengthened provincial autonomy and reduced concentrations of federal power. The PPP played a major part in that constitutional settlement. Zardari signed it during his earlier presidency.

It did not abolish emergency powers. Article 234 remains part of the Constitution. Yet provincial autonomy requires federal intervention to meet strict constitutional standards, not merely political convenience.

My earlier article, Pakistan’s Democracy Problem: When the Centre Removes an Elected Government, traces the history of federal interventions from East Bengal in 1954 to KP in 2026.

The current administration’s authority also requires close scrutiny. Our investigation of KP’s eleven-member advisory council examines the people tasked with supporting Kundi. A separate analysis asks who actually holds power under Governor’s Rule.

Who will account for the decisions made now?

Provincial departments must still operate. Security agencies require coordination, while public money remains subject to financial controls. Who approves consequential decisions, under which delegation, and who can challenge them?

Will the administration publish the instruments defining each official’s powers? Will Parliament receive the evidence that made extraordinary intervention necessary? What conditions must be met before an elected provincial government can return?

These questions are more useful than simply repeating Kundi’s election defeats.

A mandate cannot simply be transferred

Faisal Karim Kundi’s career shows two routes into public office. Constituency elections brought him success in 2008 and repeated defeats afterwards. Coalition negotiations and constitutional appointment brought him to Governor House in 2024.

The emergency of October 2026 gave that appointment much greater significance.

Pakistan’s Constitution permits appointed governors. It also recognises elected provincial governments and restricts the conditions under which federal authorities may assume their functions.

Voters in Dera Ismail Khan did not elect Kundi to the National Assembly in 2024. Coalition leaders chose him for another role soon afterwards.

Now the residents of KP deserve a precise account of why their elected provincial government could not continue, which officials presently exercise its powers and when ordinary representative government will be restored.

Kundi’s appointment followed the constitutional procedure. The justification for the subsequent emergency must stand on its own evidence.

The ballot papers from February 2024 cannot answer that question. The government’s records should.

Editorial note: The viral one-victory, eleven-defeat tally remains a reported constituency-contest compilation, not a fully reconciled set of original ECP returns. Security allegations remain attributed to the federal government and are not treated as judicial findings.