Old guards, new Pakistan
Why do people expect different results when everything remains the same, from distributing party tickets to campaigns.
The writer is a PhD scholar at West Virginia University in the US
Albert Einstein said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. I find that this quote is applicable on the recent election results. All political pundits, especially TV anchors, were looking for a “new Pakistan” after May 11. Why do people expect something different when everything remains the same — from distribution of party tickets to election campaigns, from the role of the election commission to the role of caretakers, from the attitude of party leaders to the behaviour of the candidates and from the violation of election laws to the conduct of the elections? It is quite hard for me to find anything “new” in these elections. The change in the portfolio is not the “change” the people of Pakistan were looking for. As far as the newly-elected members of the PML-N are concerned, the majority of the elected members are those who have changed their loyalties from one party to another in the past few years.
Is the voter turnout (55 per cent) in the recent elections new? No, previously it was over 63 per cent in 1970 and 55 per cent in 1977. Is the PPP’s defeat in these elections something new? No, the PPP’s performance was worse in the 1997 elections when it secured only 18 National Assembly seats. In Pakistan’s electoral history, no ruling/incumbent party ever won the elections except the highly controversial election of 1977. The PML-N will have power in Islamabad for the third time and in Punjab for the fifth time under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif. Similarly, in Sindh, the PPP will form the government for the sixth time. Nothing is new about the MQM either, which easily secured all its safe seats except the NA-250 one. The performance of the JUI-F, the PML-F, nationalist parties and other small parties is the same. Regardless of party affiliation, the overwhelming majority of newly-elected members have previously been members of either the National Assembly or the provincial assemblies. Only the independents are slightly greater in number compared with the past. And it is also not new that the majority of independents, including Fata members, have joined the ruling party, the PML-N.
There was hardly any survey, which did not predict the PML-N’s victory. I also made a safe prediction about its success along with the PTI’s seat gains in my column “A hypothetical column — 2013 election results” published in these pages on April 30. As far as the PTI and Imran Khan are concerned, the election results proved my assessment true. However, I confess that I had failed to assess the PPP’s performance, particularly in southern Punjab. The election results are really a big surprise, rather a shock, to the PTI’s supporters. They were hoping for a landslide win for the PTI. The PTI’s leadership and pundits on the electronic media are responsible for this hype.
It is a misnomer that for the first time, a democratically-elected government is transferring power to another elected political party. That already happened after the 2008 elections. It is also another misnomer that the “upper class elite” of urban posh areas has voted for the first time. Historically, the voter turnout has always been lower in the rural “poor classes” of the shanty towns of Pakistan. It is also not new that many have not accepted the election results.
In Pakistan, we have never seen a single party form the government at both the centre and in all the provinces. In other words, the current highly polarised or regionalised politics is also not a new phenomenon. Some writers are calling the PTI’s partial victory in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa a sign of change. It is not. The PTI has emerged as the single largest party there, not a majority party. If we take the PTI as a “third political force”, the performance of the MMA in the 2002 elections as a “third force” was far better than the PTI’s. In a nutshell, if the change of guards at the Quaid’s mausoleum is considered a real “change”, then we can consider the new scenario that has emerged as equivalent to a change of “old guards” in a “new” Pakistan.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2013.
Is the voter turnout (55 per cent) in the recent elections new? No, previously it was over 63 per cent in 1970 and 55 per cent in 1977. Is the PPP’s defeat in these elections something new? No, the PPP’s performance was worse in the 1997 elections when it secured only 18 National Assembly seats. In Pakistan’s electoral history, no ruling/incumbent party ever won the elections except the highly controversial election of 1977. The PML-N will have power in Islamabad for the third time and in Punjab for the fifth time under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif. Similarly, in Sindh, the PPP will form the government for the sixth time. Nothing is new about the MQM either, which easily secured all its safe seats except the NA-250 one. The performance of the JUI-F, the PML-F, nationalist parties and other small parties is the same. Regardless of party affiliation, the overwhelming majority of newly-elected members have previously been members of either the National Assembly or the provincial assemblies. Only the independents are slightly greater in number compared with the past. And it is also not new that the majority of independents, including Fata members, have joined the ruling party, the PML-N.
There was hardly any survey, which did not predict the PML-N’s victory. I also made a safe prediction about its success along with the PTI’s seat gains in my column “A hypothetical column — 2013 election results” published in these pages on April 30. As far as the PTI and Imran Khan are concerned, the election results proved my assessment true. However, I confess that I had failed to assess the PPP’s performance, particularly in southern Punjab. The election results are really a big surprise, rather a shock, to the PTI’s supporters. They were hoping for a landslide win for the PTI. The PTI’s leadership and pundits on the electronic media are responsible for this hype.
It is a misnomer that for the first time, a democratically-elected government is transferring power to another elected political party. That already happened after the 2008 elections. It is also another misnomer that the “upper class elite” of urban posh areas has voted for the first time. Historically, the voter turnout has always been lower in the rural “poor classes” of the shanty towns of Pakistan. It is also not new that many have not accepted the election results.
In Pakistan, we have never seen a single party form the government at both the centre and in all the provinces. In other words, the current highly polarised or regionalised politics is also not a new phenomenon. Some writers are calling the PTI’s partial victory in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa a sign of change. It is not. The PTI has emerged as the single largest party there, not a majority party. If we take the PTI as a “third political force”, the performance of the MMA in the 2002 elections as a “third force” was far better than the PTI’s. In a nutshell, if the change of guards at the Quaid’s mausoleum is considered a real “change”, then we can consider the new scenario that has emerged as equivalent to a change of “old guards” in a “new” Pakistan.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2013.