Since it isn’t possible not to compare the two rallies in Lahore (the one yesterday and the one on Sunday) comparisons of the specific mechanics of the two conventions are also impossible to avoid. Many comments on the choice of venues.
Imran Khan’s PTI has chosen the Minto Park, a venue that would take a huge crowd to fill up or, more importantly, create the camera-friendly impression of being filled up. The PML(N), on the other hand, chose to take out a procession from Nasir Bagh towards the Bhaati Gate in the walled city. Not spacious avenues, the latter; even smallish crowds appear to be much larger than they are. Could this be attributed to a better grasp of the optical illusions narrow streets can yield by the older party? Maybe. But it isn’t as if the League should have any insecurities. As opposed to the PTI, it is a cadre-based party, the wheels of whose machine start whirring whenever there is a rally to get people to and when – infinitely more importantly – there are votes that need to be cast. And this is Lahore, which bleeds the League shade of green.
As expected, it was an enormous rally, replete with the impromptu dances, sloganeering and – the League’s perennial fetish – lions. If the purpose was to dispel any possible impression – found more in the commentariat than the realpolitik of the constituencies itself – that the party is going to be overrun by the new challenger, it was more than served. The jostle for crowds, of course, is not a zero-sum game; it is possible for the PTI’s rally, despite its taller order, to be successful.
The chief minister’s speech itself was in very bad taste. For a sitting provincial chief executive to talk of lynchings taking place in the future in that very same venue was unseemly.
As was discussed previously in this very space, successful rallies do not a successful polling campaign make. That will depend on a lot of variables, most of which are in great flux if we accept the still-valid assumption of the polls being a good two years away. That is a political lifetime away.