- Bright in parts, futile in totality
A few months before the elections any suggestion that the PML-N could lose was liable to be pooh-poohed. Didn’t the party enjoy absolute majority in the NA on the basis of its performance in Punjab? Hadn’t PML-N gained a landslide victory in Local Government elections in the province just three years back? But then events began taking a different course. A couple of party nominees who had already started their campaign suddenly stopped it and returned the party ticket. Then came group desertions putting an end to the current certitudes.
Much has changed since then. The Sharif brothers are already in jail. Soon Hamza could join them along with a few other party leaders. A similar fate seems to await the leadership of the second mainstream party. Zardari, Faryal Talpur and Murad Ali Shah are already in the queue of those waiting to be axed. The PPP has warned that if Bilawal is targeted the party may go to ‘any extent’ — it is capable of holding protests albeit confined mainly to Sindh.
And now comes the strategic snag that would make the entire exercise meaningless. The propaganda campaign conducted against the leadership of the two mainstream parties has failed to reduce their mass appeal respectively in Punjab and Sindh, the two largest provinces of the country. The PML-N leadership has set up a committee to run the party. The PPP will soon follow suit. Despite all the maneuvering PTI failed to win an outright majority. Therefore if there was to be a re-election the PTI will have to fight joint candidates put up by the united opposition, thus getting lesser votes than last time.
The mainstream parties cannot be banned either for that would amount to forcing the dissent and anger to find extra-constitutional expressions.