Political crystal ball-gazing

On the face of it, it appears that the real contest in the upcoming elections would be between the PML-N and the PTI.

The race is now on and the field is almost level for all the contestants. The PPP, and to a lesser extent, the PML-N enter the race burdened with the baggage of incumbency, almost neutralising most of what the two had thought would serve as their selling points, come election time. The PTI has, since its glorious outing in October 2011, pulled itself out of obscurity and edged closer to the two parties in the lead but continues to suffer from all the disadvantages of being an untried and untested entity. The MQM has tried its trickiest best at the last minute to escape the incumbency factor but the move is likely to cost it a significant chunk of support. The PML-Q is increasingly relying on the PPP for handouts to save it from total extinction. The ANP, despite having remained the frontline party in the war against obscurantism, is likely to find its sacrifices neutralised by the incumbency factor.

The PML-N’s disadvantage of incumbency seems likely to be overcome to an extent by the measure of credibility and charisma its leader Nawaz Sharif enjoys, at least, in Punjab where the actual battle for Islamabad will be fought. The PPP does not have a leader as credible and as charismatic. All that the party has in Punjab is a chronic ‘lota’ in Manzoor Wattoo, who does not command even a semblance of loyalty of the traditional PPP jiyalas in the province. Former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who is likely to lead the party in the nationwide race, does not exude an iota of personal charisma and his credibility is in tatters, thanks largely to the relentless scrutiny conducted by the judiciary and the media, on a daily basis, of his shortened tenure. The least he can do for the party is to help it avert a rout in Punjab using, of course, the tantalising promise of carving out the Bahawalpur Janoobi Punjab province. In charisma and credibility, Imran Khan beats even Nawaz Sharif hands down, and carries no incumbency baggage either. He has also gone one up against all political parties in the race by holding publicly credible elections within the PTI, thus ensuring that those who fought a bitter electoral battle and won, would be motivated enough to mobilise their supporters on polling day to come and vote for the party, considerably trimming down, in the process, the disadvantage of not having enough experience of constituency politics.

On the face of it, it appears that the real contest in the forthcoming elections would be between the PML-N and the PTI, with the PPP conceding even its traditional constituencies to either of the former two. Indeed, the departure of party diehards like Nabil Gabol and Syed Zafar Ali Shah could be the precursor of an exodus of many more Bhutto loyalists. Many such disgruntled party loyalists did not desert it earlier, according to detractors of President Asif Ali Zardari, because in the first place, it was Benazir Bhutto who had distributed the tickets for the 2008 elections and secondly, by the time she was assassinated, most had spent a lot of money in their respective election campaigns to even think of leaving it at that point.

However, as they say, it is not over until it is over, it would be a sheer folly of punditry to write off the PPP this early in the race. Most of our voters live in the rural areas. For them, as opposed to the urban voters, corruption, lawlessness, power outages and bad governance are at the bottom of their decision-making checklist. For rural voters, baradari comes first and then comes the measure of thana-kutchery influence a candidate would seem to wield and finally, the command of his lord, the feudal. The PPP still has a strong presence in rural Pakistan where massive transfers of resources have taken place in the last five years through very high support prices for cash crops, triggering the booming of the informal economy in towns and villages. Add to this, the highly successful Benazir Income Support Programme, and you get a measure of good times. The PPP is likely to try to cash this advantage in full on polling day.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 20^th, 2013.