A win by a whisker

The big winners in NA-122 were the 148,247 voters. We live in interesting times

Awin is a win, no matter the margin and the PML-N will be pleased at its victory in the Lahore NA-122 by-poll. The polls passed peacefully and in reasonably good order. There were no allegations of rigging and tight supervision by the army, the police and security forces made the point that it was possible to conduct a free and fair election in Pakistan; but only at the expense of considerable state resources above and beyond those that are a statutory electoral requirement.

To the victor the spoils then, but there is a bitter taste to the roses in the mouth. Despite statements by the PML-N leadership claiming that the party’s stance vis-a-vis rigging in the 2013 elections has been vindicated, it has had the democratic equivalent of a solid kick in the posterior, only just winning in NA-122 and losing to the PTI in the fight for the Punjab Assembly seat in PP-147. The results are the clearest indicator since the general election that there is a shift of sorts in the electoral dynamics in the direction of the PTI, which was able to mount and sustain an electoral campaign in the PML-N heartland.

Mid-term by-elections everywhere can be risky for the sitting government, in part because electorates have had a chance to evaluate its performance since they last voted, and for the PML-N, these by-elections should serve as a lesson. This advice will, of course, be glossed over and a tree-full of fig leaves deployed to hide some embarrassing realities, but the electorate has spoken with many voices. It is now for the PTI to capitalise on the result, and ponder what might have been had it displayed rather more political maturity and acumen than has characterised its activity in the last year.

For the PML-N, there needs to be an urgent look inwards, an examination of what has gone wrong rather than what went right — and the NA-122 win cannot be counted as one of the things that went right because it came so close to going catastrophically wrong. A Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one. The big winners were the 148,247 voters. We live in interesting times.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2015.

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