LAHORE: Javed, a resident of Mozang (UC-68) for more than 50 years, has spent most of his life making and selling tea. A shiny, well-carpetted road lies between his tea shop and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) central office, which Maryam Nawaz inaugurated on Aug 29, as she started her mother’s campaign for NA-120.
But this road was re-built after the announcement of the by-election, just in time for Maryam’s visit. Till then it looked like most other roads in NA-120; broken, water-logged and jam packed with traffic.
“They have done nothing for the people here in the last three and a half decades,” Javed said, referring to PML-N’s long hold on power in Punjab.
“We do not have clean drinking water or regular electricity. We have broken roads always inundated with sewage. Five minutes of rain leave the whole area water-logged for five days. And this is Nawaz Sharif’s constituency”.
MACRO VS MICRO
PML-N’s infrastructure development policy, which revolves around mega projects like power plants and motorways, has left micro-level issues – like roads, hospitals, schools, etc – largely unaddressed.
And few areas typify this irony than NA-120, the springboard for Nawaz Sharif’s three stints as prime minister.
“I’ll admit the party has focused more on mega projects than civic projects,” said Malik Naseem, vice chairman of UC-61 (old Anarkali), as he sipped tea outside Javed’s shop.
“We just do not get enough money from MNAs and MPAs to build roads or hospitals”.
The senior leadership’s distance with local governments is not going unnoticed at the grass root. But their protests are usually met with indifference, not funds or grants.
PML-N won the most seats in the local body elections, Malik explained. Empowering them will, eventually, win the party more hearts and minds, and headlines.
But the party has never been for local governments. Critics say this aversion stems from the desire to hold development funds at the MNA and MPA level – to concentrate power among the political elite – instead of devolving to the union councils.
That is why the government had to be arm-twisted by the Supreme Court to hold local body elections in 2015.
Despite repeated assurances from the office of Majid Zahoor, MPA (PP-140) for Mozang, Temple Road, old Anarkali — which falls under NA-120 — Pakistan Today was not given a list of development programmes in the constituency for this electoral cycle.
VICTORY MARGIN
Party workers managing the campaign are confident of maintaining the 40,000-vote victory margin from 2013.
“PTI’s graph rose initially, but now it has lost its charm”, said Zulfiqar Durrani, office secretary of Majid Zahoor’s election office. “Panama verdict did not hurt PML-N electorally at all. In fact, it has increased sympathy for Nawaz Sharif”.
They are not worried about a likely thinning of the religious lobby vote either. In addition to Jamaat e Islami, there is also the Milli Muslim Leage (MML) – Jamaatud Dawa’s new political face – whose vote bank traditionally favoured PML-N.
“They cannot bag too many votes on their own,” he added. “The most they can do is seven or eight thousand, which won’t affect us”.
Plus, PML-N has a peculiar voter psychology on its side. Despite long years of neglect, a number of residents Pakistan Today questioned were determined to still vote for PML-N.
“PML-N is my blood group,” said Murtaza, a cloth merchant. “Nobody does anything anywhere. Why should that stop us from voting for Nawaz?”
He made a pertinent reference to Larkana, and PPP’s record there, before ending the conversation with “Only the lion can roar in NA-120”.
