PML-N to the fore, again?
Throughout the democratic world by-polls or mid-term elections are the most effective means to gauge public opinion. These polls also most graphically depict the mood swing of the electorate for or against the political parties in the fray, thus reflecting the drift of the future prospects. In Pakistan though, if history is any guide, by-polls are taken for granted to go the ruling party’s way, for it has more goodies on offer for the electorate and its power to tilt the administrative windmills and holding a sway over the locally influential entities unfalteringly in its favour become the decisive factors. Hence, apart from the few constituencies where personality clash is too pronounced or larger than life egos are at play, it is mostly a staid affair. Though today a sizable number of constituencies – 16 National and 26 provincial – are going to witness by-polls, with the leading lights from all political parties staying put, the campaign across the board was indeed lacklustre.
As in any election, the onus of making by-polls a contest is on the opposition. With the PPP still not having recovered from the rude shock over its May 11 debacle, and limiting its ambitions to only a handful of constituencies, as in the general elections, the PTI is trying to make a match of it against the PML-N in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Intent on not losing the turf it has gained, the PTI is especially concentrating on the seats where its candidates had posted victories in the general elections and subsequently vacated them. Be it Peshawar, Islamabad or Mianwali (even DI Khan where the by-polls were subsequently postponed), there was vigour and vibrancy on display, for the PTI seemed intent not losing the turf it had gained. As for Lahore, despite four national and provincial seats, the PTI gave it a wide berth.
The timing of the prime minister’s maiden speech in this third stint may not entirely have been a coincidence, and it had an emotional appeal for the electorate in the party’s stronghold, the central and northern Punjab. On the whole, so impregnable it considers its position to be, that the PML-N did not even think there was a gauntlet to pick. The two senior Sharifs, Nawaz and Shahbaz, consigned the job of electioneering to the understudy, Hamza, thinking he was good enough to deliver the results. And with 22 out of 42, seven national and 15 provincial, by-polls being contested in the Punjab, the PML-N having vacated most of these, it is likely to regain the bulk of them to strengthen its already formidable numerical strength in both these legislatures, the national and Punjab assemblies.
