In a world where greetings have to always be profuse and generously decorated with the superlative, and in a country where these adjectives have to be accompanied by embraces if the recipient so approves, one man is being accused of forcibly adopting the nation’s new leader as his own. “Mian Nawaz Sharif was my leader then and he is my leader now.” This was hardly out of sync with the general Pakistani custom of bombastic salutations and the occasion was unprecedented. Don’t know what all this fuss is about.

Only Mr Hashmi, with the possible exception of the now obscure Sardar Aslam Raisani, had a chance to create a controversy as big as this over a trifle. A degree is a degree, whether it is faked or whether it is genuine. Likewise, a leader remains a leader, even if, prima facie, there are some technical reasons to say that you have made your exit from the ranks of being led. The expulsion is impossible — no, it is unthinkable, in the case of a powerful prime minister who wants to carry everyone along and who has forgiven all.

There is only one possible explanation to the outrageous stuff Mr Hashmi’s hailing of the very worthy has resulted in. His watchers in the assembly have been particularly severe on him and once again they are keen on finding a slip where none has actually taken place.

In the wake of his latest so-called gaffe, the mischievous lot had the quick presence of mind to recall a rather awkward incident from the past. In the same house during the previous term, Mr Hashmi had earned himself the ultimate ignominy by coming up with a line that could loosely be interpreted as appreciative of President Asif Ali Zardari: him, of all the people on the face of this earth.

Not exactly known to mince his words but until then a PML-N loyalist to the core, Javed Hashmi had then said that one needed to be a PhD to understand Mr Zardari’s politics. For all we know, bound by the presidential protocol, that could have been his way of politely asking the president to please explain; his way of pointing out that the president didn’t in fact possess a doctorate, an obvious logical outcome of which was that he did not quite know what politics he was doing.

Yet it was made out to be a glaring error of judgement, and the guilty was pounced upon and lavished with innuendo. Some of the pundits, at hand and looking to supervise a hasty untying of the knot ceremony, went as far as predicting his separation from the PML-N camp he was an unshakeable part of until then.

The latest incident could also have been ignored. At least some of the dire consequences it entailed for the national politics could well have been avoided with adherence to the time-honoured and often all-encompassing Pakistani greeting regime and to the spirit of reconciliation permeating the house at the start of a new term. But some of those who chose to ignore the “my friend Musharraf” quip from the ever-truthful Mahmood Khan Achakzai during the same session failed in their democratic duty when they couldn’t quite extend the same courtesy towards a very emotional rebel from southern Punjab. That’s discriminatory.

Soon afterwards, his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) explained that Mr Hashmi’s seemingly grand welcome to Mian Sahib on his third term was actually a result of a slip of the tongue and not at all meant to be a salute. This decided the matter and those who had been saying the PTI was too bland and that the party didn’t have a sense of humour were left grimacing.

Last Sunday, a whole four days of national debate over the extremely important issue later, Javed Hashmi had to formally retract his statement. In a very meaningful assertion, he told journalists in Multan that the television anchors, habitual party-changers as they are, had blown his remarks out of proportion. If that has not already happened, given the speed at which they hop jobs, one of these days an anchor is bound to sign-off for the wrong channel, where he or she had been employed until a few hours ago. Yet the media was so unsympathetic to someone who has changed parties once in 35 years and who was trying to improve on a democratic tradition of across-the-party eulogising that is already very much in existence.

At the press conference, Javed Hashmi clarified that the so-called mistake ascribed to him did not occur because of any perceived similarities in the respective leaderships of Mian Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan. He strove to create a clear distinction by applauding Mr Khan “for trying to introduce a new political culture in the country.” He was close. Mr Khan was about to be credited for setting a new trend in politics, but just then his party intervened and set the process in reverse by forcing Mr Hashmi to renege on his message of felicitation to the old leader, new prime minister.

Hailing apparently rival leaders for their work is not unheard of in Pakistan. President Asif Zardari says democracy in the country is the fruit borne out of the sacrifices made by not just his leader Benazir Bhutto but also by Mian Nawaz Sharif. In turn, Ms Bhutto is today celebrated by political groups across the board.

Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is routinely remembered as the only leader this country has produced after the Quaid-i-Azam. Berated for only discovering true leadership when the leader was gone, Javed Hashmi, the rebel, seemed to be only seeking to make a turn towards the positive when he was brusquely pulled up.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

The small pieces that make up the party remain largely unrecognised, submerged in the grand event of the dynasty being restored to the throne.

At the beginning there was a party and hundreds of members who fought the polls. Now, there remains one individual and his mandate. The party and its varied ranks have already been obscured. This is not a good sign for the collective of the elected, given the lack of delegation of powers that marked the rule of the PML-N government in Punjab over the last five years.

In the last term Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s style of governance reeked of a distrust of, even contempt for, those who sat in the provincial assembly. All they were required to do was to bring the chief a mandate, and Shahbaz could take it from there using his own remarkable talent of knowing what the masses wanted and delivering it.

The democratic processes of getting to the end he hardly ever had time for. Instead, he relied heavily on the bureaucrats, many of whom are now set to join Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif’s team at the centre.

From among the politicians some of the old names are going to come back as ministers, many of them deservingly. But the point is: how is the PML-N going to deal with the large number which has collected in its camp in the elections? They include heavyweights and the lesser known, who could also do with some active work, rising from their rubber stamp status.

The democratic processes and the involvement of party cadres at various levels are important. After the election of the prime minister on Wednesday, MQM’s Farooq Sattar spoke about the need to have a local government with particular reference to controlling law and order.

Promised by many in the run-up to the polls, the delegation of power to local bodies would be a significant departure from the policies of the parties which were in power over the last five years. But it could serve the purpose of organising parties and party cadres where they can feel they are a part of the thrust for change.

This was one area where the PML-N government in Punjab was as guilty of dragging its feet as were any other provincial governments in the country. None of the governments were willing to create a system under which they would have to share power with official set-ups at the local level and which could throw up new political ambitions and new players.

The latest elections were a reconfirmation of how local bodies serve as a nursery for ambitious political types at the grassroots. Those who had entered politics under Gen Pervez Musharraf’s local government system were seen fighting it out with the old and new claimants for honours in general elections. Actually, the ones who had the exposure of politics at the union councils and the nazim offices were tipped as having a better chance at the hustings as opposed to the new faces.

As established parties of old, both the PPP and PML-N had little interest in nurturing the new, when the exercise had the potential of unsettling the party’s existing scheme. The MQM wanted the local government elections so that it could have power directly in its urban strongholds instead of being dependent on its partnerships with the provincial or federal governments.

The party leaders are reluctant to create these centres of aspirations at the grassroots, fearing their challenge at a later stage. They are forever looking to rule through a close coterie of friends, preferably close relatives, leaving elected members and party cadres in general out of their scheme. There is no bigger exponent of this brand of good governance than the PML-N in recent years in Punjab.

The Sharif brothers will do well to understand that many of the PML-N members sitting in the Punjab Assembly during the last term were unhappy with the way they were treated by the leadership. The danger is that their voices, rightfully asking for a role in managing the affairs of the people by whom they have been elected, may be further submerged in the even bigger mandate for their party leadership this time.

The PML-N is the more obvious party which has delayed the empowering of party cadres and their utilisation in the democratic processes based on the principles of devolution and delegation. All other major parties are also in need of restructuring, not least the PPP which is a party in a quandary and which has been sadly reduced to waiting for the end of President Zardari’s term before it can make its next move.

But perhaps there is no bigger example of the problems with which the parties are beset than that of the Jamaat-i-Islami. The most organised, the most disciplined of them all, the Jamaat was recently a subject of some internal criticism over its feudal tendencies, which of course meant that certain of its workers felt they were being denied their usual role.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is the proponent of change and has made an impact overall. It boasts of creating a party structure but fails to earnestly recognise how the party elections it held just before the general polls could have been manipulated by those who had experience and money at the cost of the so-called ideological workers.
It can make a huge contribution to Pakistani politics by holding the promised local government polls in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as early as possible. The province will gain from that election and it could well trigger a process that could force other provinces to follow suit.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

The maturity that everyone was ascribing to him since his last term in the 1990s is shining through his speech, latest in his masterful, unparalleled evaluation of the election results. There could have been no better occasion for him to divulge what no one else seems to have fathomed on the auspicious 15th birthday of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, May 28.

He was all praise for the wise voters in Punjab (minus perhaps the millions who didn’t vote for him) and fit in well into his role of the elder brother when he only mildly admonished the emotional in KP and the traditionalists (purely in the Pakistani-Sindhi context) in Sindh.

Even the incoming prime minister appeared not too sure about Balochistan. He did acknowledge the province had sided with him but didn’t for the moment have the evidence to say whether the small percentage of people who did vote in Balochistan had acted wisely or otherwise.

Mian Sahib’s frank statement on Yaum-i-Takbeer followed a long-running tradition of its own. When a newspaper conducted a survey just after the nuclear blasts in May 1998 its respondents by and large were the wise and the knowledgeable of Punjab.

But somehow a stray Sindhi working in Lahore also managed to have his say, for whatever it was worth in that proud moment in the nation’s history. Asked what he thought of the nuclear test, the traditionalist replied with the characteristic unawareness of a man cut off from the mainstream: “Can’t say. I was away [on leave] in Sindh [when the bomb came around].”

If Mian Sahib’s certificate to the PPP voters in the province was not sufficient bemoaning of tradition, May 28 offered further proof of a continuation of the bad old habits in Sindh.

The PPP defied the vociferous attempts at diverting it by nominating Qaim Ali Shah for another term as chief minister. It was bound to be taken as a statement that the PPP was determined to stay the course, notwithstanding the post-poll chorus that egged the party towards reforms and revival in parts of the country where it had been reduced to a ghostly existence.

Only a few days earlier, President Asif Ali Zardari had bravely come down to his Bahria Town fortress in Lahore to express his regrets over a PPP no-show in elections in Punjab. Secure that the moment could not be re-enacted and he could not be forced to run a dangerous public campaign, he said he should have resigned as president before the elections and led the PPP’s polls campaign.

The statement had a truly magical impact on those who were pretty sure the party, and more specifically President Zardari, had duly earned the beating the PPP got on May 11. Now with a single remark the cause behind the problem was elevated to the status of a potential remedy — as per tradition that is hard to practise in the given circumstances.

If the PPP is to be revived, if it is at all necessary to whip it back to life, if at all it has a role to play in Pakistani politics, it cannot return all by itself and by the old mode.

Asif Zardari cannot bring it back with his promised prolonged camping in Lahore. Bilawal Zardari can hardly hope to do any better unless the PPP leadership recognises the changed landscape which requires sustaining an urbanised lifestyle in an increasingly conservative population too fearful of walking out of line. The party has to be built anew with a fresh mission statement based on current public aspirations. The old cannot be, should not be revived.

The PPP cannot rise in isolation. Wishing for a PPP or an Awami National Party for that matter as an expression of Pakistani pluralism is too romantic a notion for these difficult times.

The space has shrunk for those who appear to be asking for as little as variety in thinking. Only in some cases it has been more visible and some of the contained have been more loudly blamed than others.

Maybe some had a greater responsibility and a more central role in the fight than others, but the retreat has been bigger and far more widespread than manifest in the loss of an election by a political party.

Take the lawyers, the most recent leaders of a public movement whose unions today are a patchwork of often contrasting political hues that limit rather than encourage free debate.

Take the media which lives forever in fear of the ‘dominant’ and which maintained a campaign tone against the PPP government over all these five years.

It is not about whether or not they had the right to go after the government. They might have had all good reasons. The point is the media image of the PPP was a major factor that facilitated the party’s fall, a factor not taken fully into account in the pre-poll projections of who would win how many seats nor now in discussions about the PPP’s revival.

The seat estimates for the PPP some in the media came up with reeked of modesty that didn’t quite gel with the media’s own powers to crystallise and standardise as far as possible the public mood against a bad government. Nor did they go well with the stated ideals of cleansing the country of the corrupt.

The question the Napiers running the media conquest should now be asking is how the PPP won in (the traditional, unaware, insulated?) Sindh instead of why it lost elsewhere.

It is strange they should be wasting time on discussing the revival of the corrupt and the inefficient. Now is the time for the campaigners to shed some of their professional modesty and objectivity, celebrate their victory and maybe mock the feudal and the traditional.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

No election is completely free and transparent and election fraud is not unheard of in Pakistan. All votes are accompanied by ballot stuffing and rigging.

If this is true, which surely it could be, why has there been so much noise this time around? If truth be told, it is not easy to blame it wholly on the dreamy Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) followers, the group some of us are so wary of that they would rather have it contained here and now.

The PTI followers are new and may have been misled by their enthusiasm into believing that victory was theirs for the taking. The problem is the gap between what was seen in the run-up to the polls and in the results, (for whatever it is worth right now) as evidence against hard, cold facts yet to be fully revealed in all detail.

Errors and omissions are accepted. These are frankly just suspicions — as many suspicions are — and very much liable to be found baseless on closer scrutiny. That scrutiny cannot be carried out without complete and free access to the election record, which is taking a bit too long to collect. The sooner that data is available, the sooner it will be possible to dispel the impressions.

Election officials are never thrilled by the prospect of a few self-styled researchers probing their work. They are apparently out to make an example of an organisation of election observers which has admitted to having released the wrong figures about a few voting stations.

How it came about and the role the Election Commission of Pakistan’s polling scheme might have played in it is yet to be investigated. All that is known is that the observers’ group is faced with more than a dozen criminal cases in Punjab.

Deterrents apart, in time, when the full data is available, there will surely be proposals about how to better organise an election. Already there are bits of evidence available that call for greater care and transparency in future.

The 472 votes that Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was shown to have got at one station in a Rawalpindi constituency were reduced by 200 on recount. But obviously that was too small an incident for those who must always base their case on grand numbers and big percentages: 200 out of 472, about 42 per cent, is it?

On another plane, there was also evidence of a young boy who got 20,000 odd votes in a contest for a Punjab Assembly seat in Multan. Was he dead or alive, well or injured, could he be expected to return and be with them, his voters had absolutely no idea.

Ali Haider Gilani was taken away by armed men a couple of days before the vote. That is a story which has yet to take its place among the chronicles of forcible removal of political opponents, like the most infamous disappearances in the period just before the 1977 general election in the country.

These things always happen. These are things that must be ignored in the larger interest of the country and democracy, the dominant argument goes. Those who are confused by the huge difference between their informal (anecdotal, the fact-finders brusquely point out) evidence and the final numbers need not scratch any deeper.

The suggestions for a better system can wait. The cries for an order that actually facilitates and not discourages the search for evidence are to be drowned in the positives that the election has thrown up: an experienced, mature, chastened, even forward-looking leadership, stability of a huge mandate, continuation of democracy which can be gravely threatened by protest over a few ‘unexpected’ results — four, 10, at most 12 seats.

Pakistanis have just performed a huge democratic feat by helping an elected government on to a full term. They must now pledge complete, unconditional support to a new government with a huge mandate, and that commitment must rest on a total submission to the conduct of polls by the bureaucracy, overseen with so much ceremony by the ECP. Sound logic.

They can of course always analyse, and there is a lot to be assessed and analysed out there right now. It hurts no one’s national interest to discuss the ‘impossible’ return
of the PPP to national politics, or to talk about the containment of the PTI.

Reduced to a vainly protesting cult from a grand alliance of electables in the span of few days, Imran Khan’s party has been behaving exactly as its opponents would have liked it to.

Waiting for directions from its leader from his hospital bed, it has failed to effectively fight the elitist, ‘burger party’ label that its detractors are so eager to paste on it and it has at times appeared to be undecided in its post-election stronghold of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The PTI’s Defence protests in Karachi and Lahore have failed to expand to the delight of its opponents. The party is dependent to a large extent on its allegations of election fraud, but the demonstrations its followers have held in the two cities had to be complemented by some noise created deep in the districts.

The much-hailed party structure created by the famous intra-party election was nowhere to be seen. This was an easy opportunity and was exploited by the PTI’s opponents as they explained the huge gap between the promise generated by Imran’s run-up and his delivery.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Reminiscences of the 1990s that we all dread in the new Pakistan which we all seek to create today. This is not a warning, just a reminder that history must not repeat itself. Some of the unwanted bits from history have already been allowed too many repeats.

History says an election which is controlled is transparently unfair. In 1990, a few officially recognised minders of the state of Pakistan were moved by their conscience to purge the country of the unclean. Money changed hands to thwart selected politicians. The election was fixed. The levers have since travelled to the militants. The results are uncannily similar.

In the 1990 general election, more remembered by many today because of the Asghar Khan case, it was a landslide victory in Punjab for the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad.
The IJI won 91 of the total 114 national seats in Punjab, while the Pakistan Democratic Alliance (PDA) got only 14. Yet the Ittehad’s all-Pakistan haul was 105.

Back then, just as now, the Sharif-led side got an overwhelming majority in Punjab. PPP (PDA) was reduced to 10 seats in the province. The big difference was that despite it being a majority party there it did lose Sindh. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was a collage of various hues as it has remained to this day. Balochistan is delicate now and was sensitively poised even before when the IJI did manage to have its government there as it did in the three other provinces.

They say things have changed over all these years. The 1990 experiment ended less than three years into Nawaz Sharif’s first government in Islamabad, but the country has since proven it can have a full term of civilian rule and has grown up sufficiently to have a civilian to civilian transfer of power.

The government that ruled between 2008 and 2013 failed miserably, going little beyond ceremonially discovering and gleefully acknowledging that it had been allowed to breath beyond the average life span in Pakistan.

Election 2013 is a brutal reminder of just how much the party which headed the last coalition has suffered. The lack of campaign was an issue, but there were other problems which the vote on May 11 provided a grave confirmation of. A lack of governance has exacted a huge price from the PPP, which may have at some places been unsettled by the administration’s bias for its rivals.

In an emerging divide between the new (PTI) and the old, sections of the population which felt more secure with the conventional, had to choose between the PML-N and PPP. They sided with the PML-N, which offered them possibilities and security the PPP was in no position to offer.

Security against militancy was an extremely important election issue in Punjab though the pre-election speeches may not have reflected this. The last coalition’s failure to either co-opt or eliminate the militants was a major if not the deciding factor behind their bad performance at the polls.

Unless their appointed protectors appear powerful enough to quell the militancy, reconciliation is the only viable option for the people. No amount of persuasion
will convince the Pakistani majority to own the war unless there is evidence to convince them that this war can actually be won. This is human nature. Until then, they will be naturally inclined to look for security via deals.

There are a few recent examples to be emulated nonetheless. As a significant sign of evolution the political commentators agree that, even with the huge mandate behind him, Nawaz Sharif will have to display the Asif Zardari trait of ‘reconciliation’ to keep matters intact and running, as opposed to Zardari who kept it intact but hardly running.

The divide runs through parliament, with PPP maintaining a strong presence in the Senate, and the provinces looking poised for either non-PML-N governments or difficult coalitions.

Balochistan has been the subject of many positive overtures by Nawaz in recent times. In government his initial test will be which nationalists he chooses to partner with and that choice will reflect how much leeway other important ‘non-political’ actors are willing to allow him in the restive province.

For how long they will allow it, is a moot point and will decide exactly how much progress democracy here has actually made. Nawaz has to be given an opportunity to play positive in Balochistan to avoid a repeat of what happened after a similar mandate back in the 1990 polls.

KP represents an altogether different challenge. It is where the PML-N and its new challenger the PTI face off against each other. The PTI is buoyed by its youth while the PML-N, though it has won a number of seats in the KP Assembly, has been bruised.

Many of its old stalwarts have lost in the election and the party organisation is not in all that good a shape following some of the recent engineering works carried out by the leadership in the name of repair.

KP, the province which rejects parties with a facility and frequency unmatched in the country, is all set to offer the next phase of the Khan versus Sharif fight. The first question is, are the people in KP able to differentiate ideologically between Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif? Or did they also vote with the same mindset with which many in Lahore cast their ballot?

For a large number of voters in Lahore the election on May 13 was not a rejection of one party in favour of the other. Ideologically, a distinction was difficult and experience in administration competed with change and enthusiasm.

One option was good but the other was good enough. That must change now.

The nuances must emerge to help people tell one contestant from the other, in Punjab and more likely in the ever impatient KP.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

— File Photo

Fears, doubts, hope, ambition — they all come in a package for Pakistan where days before an election, it is still possible for the people to wonder suspiciously: are we going to have an election?

It is not unusual for a general election in Pakistan to be an incomplete affair as the case of the first general election held in 1970 shows. The Awami League won a majority but was denied power and this ended in the creation of Bangladesh.

The 1977 election was rigged and led to a coup and to the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Political parties were barred in the 1985 polls and, in 1988, a policy to contain the PPP was executed. That policy was in full force in 1990 as evidenced in the Asghar Khan case.

The 1993 election was boycotted by the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (now Muttahida Qaumi Movement). One of the main beneficiaries of the MQM boycott then was the Jamaat-i-Islami and in 1997, it was the JI’s turn to stay away from the polls.

The 2002 election was engineered. The top leadership of the PML-N was in exile and the PPP chairperson also decided to not return to the country for that election due to pending court cases. It was still a few years before Benazir Bhutto was to strike a deal with Gen Musharraf, which paved the way for her return and that of the Sharifs to Pakistani politics.

The 2008 election was boycotted by many. The JI refused to be drawn into the exercise, even though as part of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, it had provided some political weight to the general. Imran Khan was another ex-Musharraf ally who did not take part, but the most conspicuous absence was that of the nationalists in Balochistan which was still reeling under the fatal blow Gen Musharraf dealt Akbar Bugti.

Come election 2013, and the containment job was taken over by the militants. The Taliban spelt out their disapproval of the PPP, MQM and the Awami National Party in no uncertain terms, and in Balochistan a band of insurgents with their own ideology sought to thwart the polls. Rallies were attacked in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Punjab, where two parties whose credentials had been approved by the Taliban appeared to be locked in a battle, was fortunately spared. Punjab has always been the ‘key’. The unevenness of the 2013 polls have added a new dimension to Pakistan’s choice: the new leader has to be approved by Punjab and selected by the extremists, or vice versa.

But the prevailing fear predates the militants’ disapproval. It is rooted in the frequent derailing of the system of democracy. It will take Pakistanis a while to get used to the new ‘conspiracy’ hatched by elements who avowedly claim there is no turning back of democracy here any more. The delicate system has to be frequently propped up by calls by the army chief and the international powers. And the words of these guardians have an urgent ring to them that is reserved for the new entrants.

So it is a fresh start once more for a new Pakistan rather than a continuation of the ‘grand’ tradition that the restoration of democracy in 2008 had kicked off.

Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan. — File Photo.

Mian Nawaz Sharif may have proved to be a political operator of some merit over the last few years, but is now confronting the toughest challenge of his career since 1988 — Imran Khan.

Long before the 2013 elections were announced, it was not difficult for those in Punjab, the PML-N’s power base, to see a repeat of the 1997 polls. Back then, the PML-N had swept Punjab to secure a huge mandate, and the PPP must have feared a repeat this time. It responded by not challenging the Sharifs’ hold in central Punjab but by trying to carve territory for itself in southern Punjab where it did well in the 2008 polls. The PPP’s ‘new province’ slogan, based on a negative projection of the ‘Takht Lahore’ rather than on its claims of development, made it even more vulnerable in upper Punjab.

Enter Imran Khan

This is when Imran Khan intervened. Khan had been long trying to make a mark for himself; a major impediment was his reluctance to take on the Sharifs directly. Once he overcame this obstacle, he found support among the young and not so young who had come to equate the failures of political governments with those of the system. Khan was their new Mr Clean. Over time, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s argument underwent frequent changes so that the party could equip itself for a real shot at power. Even then, he managed to stir a wave which grew more threatening by the day.

Imran Khan was likely to get the support of the old PPP voters, especially in upper Punjab. These voters had become wary of their party’s concessions on territory and ideology and were likely to wilt under the weight of accusations against the current PPP leadership.

Another large group which supported the PTI once belonged to the PML-Q. It consisted of many new, ambitious politicians who first arrived on the scene after the Musharraf-held elections — general and local government. Some had been embraced by the PML-N and felt secure; those perhaps wanting to be absorbed by the PPP were chastened by the unpopularity of the Zardari set-up. In any case this group of political wannabes was too big to be accommodated by the old parties. Most of this Musharraf residue was threatened with extinction but it now found space for possible progress in the PTI. Much of it was concentrated in Punjab. Then there were people: ordinary people wanting to stamp the bat.

Many PTI candidates for May 11 are old PML-Q hands, but they are supported in good number by new faces inspired by Imran Khan’s slogan for change. The perception that Khan has not been able to woo many politicians from the PML-N in Punjab was thought to be to his disadvantage after he made it known he was willing to make compromises for securing power first. It was thought a concentration of the anti-PML-N vote in the PTI camp could consolidate the Sharif support especially in Punjab.

Over time, it appeared that all these old calculations were at risk and new patterns were set to emerge. It was still between the PTI and PML-N, and too close to call, it being difficult to put numbers on the Imran wave.

PML-Q’s dwindling presence

The much-talked-about PML-Q vote bank was nonexistent to begin with and whatever little promise it offered has since largely been compromised by the defiance of the seat-adjustment formula between the PPP and PML-Q by their candidates.

In any case, the large chunk the PML-Q got in Punjab in 2008 stemmed from a general feeling that the ‘establishment’ was keen for it to continue in power. The PML-Q has served its purpose, and if a small percentage of loyal Muslim League vote, inspired by expectations of victory, exists, it is more likely to go to the PML-N. The PML-Q may only retain a feeble presence on the strength of the personal vote banks of its candidates.

Balochistan

The PML-Q put up a good show last time it was in Balochistan, where it revelled in the absence of the nationalists, before submitting to a junior role under the chief minister, PPP’s Aslam Raisani. While  the PML-Q has disappeared from the scene in the province, the PPP retains a very small presence here. The PML-N has sought to create alliances with nationalists.

That could turn out to be a vital link between Balochistan and the rest of the country which tends to repeatedly forget it, sadly often treating it as territory that can be best looked after by the garrison boys. The province is crying out for a look above party positions, and party performances in election.

Yet, participation by everyone in the May 11 vote is absolutely essential for an initiative that can then be taken into the larger debate about Balochistan’s future.  Voter turnout is crucial and the reaction of various groups to the deployment of the army for the election has to be watched closely and responsibly responded to.

PPP: a spent force?

In what could have long-lasting repercussions, it is the Q’s ally PPP which is in disarray in both KP where it did quite well in 2008 and in vast areas of Punjab.

The PPP campaign in southern Punjab and even in its old bastion Sindh, where it confronts a multi-party alliance this time, needs a leader in command and ideas to sustain it. Such a campaign could have made some impact on districts upwards where the party has candidates who undertook considerable development work in the last five years. Many are struggling under the cumulative effects of incumbency and because their party has failed to come up with a lead campaigner. The PPP, like the Awami National Party in KP, has been severely contained and could pay a big price on polling day.

The Sharif factor

If an analysis of likely fortunes were to be based on election campaigns alone, the PML-N had at least two politicians of the highest national stature in Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif to campaign freely and fearlessly. They did not only campaign in Punjab but also in Sindh, KP and Balochistan. And they, like Imran Khan, had no time to get into the niceties which would require them to speak against the violence perpetrated in the poll run-up on the MQM, PPP and ANP. They were concerned with their own political security.

The combined effect of these forays by the Sharifs — and Imran Khan — the militant warnings and the media relays, which highlighted the absence of the PPP, threaten to severely curtail the number of seats the Zardari party expects.

The PML-N drive was supplemented by the next generation of Sharifs — Hamza Shahbaz, Maryam Nawaz, Salman Shahbaz — in Lahore. This was a bonus when what they were fighting against was actually a one-man flying squad by the name of Imran Khan and a no-show Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.

The relentless Sharif show was a rerun of earlier campaigns where the Sharifs sought to overwhelm their opponents by flaunting the sheer number of in-house campaigners as also by investing in other resources to ensure that they appear to dominate the scene. Before an election is won a party must appear to be winning it with banners and rallies and grand election offices at strategic places. The PML-N sought to convey that message through aggressive campaigning. Imran Khan again intervened, one-man, but energised by a huge response to his call for change. The PTI hit back with energy that has been absent over the last many elections.

The Imran Khan wave went up and down since the PTI, as one of the favoured parties of Pakistan’s current moral guardians, had not been able to come up with an ideology which was sufficiently different from that of the PML-N. Another crucial point was that the PML-N was offering leadership at both the centre and Punjab. Khan had himself to take charge at the centre but didn’t offer quality candidates for the province. But the PTI cadres differed, primarily by saying that change was ideology enough.

Playing it safe

Even though the absence of PTI stalwarts to challenge big PML-N names in Lahore constituencies was puzzling, the PTI’s challenge did shake the PML-N. A contest was on — the meek like the PPP dreamily hoping for a three-way.

The PTI was depending too much on its leader and on the youthful wave whose velocity no one is sure about. But then this is what the wave is all about. It creates excitement and makes predictions tricky. Both the contenders fighting it out in Punjab and KP promise a sweep of their own. Independent scenarios see tough fights and do not yet rule out a hung parliament.

That will be a test for Nawaz Sharif but a more severe trial for Khan. The PTI chief has been able to attract individuals from old parties in recent times. Striking partnerships with parties is a different ballgame altogether. Khan will do well as long as he does not compromise his individuality and remembers that the Sharifs are his main opponents in this battle over a new Pakistan.

It had to be this way since Imran was the challenger, the harbinger of change and the leader of the youth.

There were a few other sparkling moments of wit but by and large, it has been more brute force than canny craftsmanship from the stage this time around. The best — or by many estimates the worst — part is going to come a day or two ahead of the vote when the parties will seek to deliver the staggering blow to their rivals. So stock up on nimco and stay connected.

Noon versus junoon did have an effect — as did the PTI slogan targeting the PML-N election symbol of tiger: ‘Dekho dekho kaun aya, Sher ka shikari aya’ (roughly ‘Look, the tiger’s hunter is here’).

I saw a few mild confrontations between the holders of the ‘bat’ and the old proud flaunters of the ‘tiger’s’ instinct in Lahore over the last week. In most of these, the junoon appeared to be bringing the desperate chants out of the League crowd.

The Leaguers were forced to react and sought to drown their opponents by sheer volume. They did not succeed easily. It appeared that the Noon dominance of Punjab which began in 1988 with the help of the Jamaat-i-Islami was being threatened by the ‘good-looking’ version of Jamaat.

The politician in Shahbaz Sharif was unable to suppress the talented bard that exists within him and the chief minister did respond in rhyme to Imran’s noon-junoon refrain. But, even with Shahbaz’s authoritative style, it didn’t quite have the effect of turning back the tsunami. That task had to be assigned to the old institutions that must forever look at all young initiatives with suspicion.

The more Imran depended on the youth, the more likely he was to collect these old institutions at one place in opposition to him, under the banner of those who claim they have been chiselled by experience and know that this was no children’s game they were indulging in. This was an occupational hazard Imran was faced with as he could not afford to remove his emphasis on the young.

Nawaz Sharif was very young — in his 20s — when he broke onto the scene as a politician. But even then he relied heavily on the counsel of elders well placed in the hierarchy, an obedient young man forever willing to follow the direction of his grown-up promoters. Some from that old set of elders still remain relevant, here and abroad, and the PML-N was quite keen to now remind them of his graduation as a reliable choice.

They seem to respond well, and in some telltale commentaries in the Western press, Nawaz was shown to be all set to take power again. These Western certificates were then prominently reproduced by the local media in aid of an impending Nawaz government.

Locally, some other old institutions were also sought to be reactivated against the youth threat. The biradari was one and trader bodies were others. Informal groups of seasoned men, quite often associated with the mosque, were also called upon to make their contribution towards thwarting the youth who are inherently wayward.

A search was launched for evidence of the loose morals of the leader of the young and a few things to be frowned upon were of course found.

However, by and large, the old institutions did not find it as easy as in the past. With all his follies, Imran Khan was a man who belonged here. Both geographically and morally he couldn’t be projected as an outsider as Benazir Bhutto was in the past, even though the talk which described him as a ‘Pathan’ out to introduce chaos in Punjab did appear to have an effect on voters.

By and large, his voters were prepared to stand firm and take the contest to polling day, refusing to be cowed by the old PML-N tactic of overwhelming their opponents.

The PTI had quite intelligently used the March 23 public meeting at the Minar-i-Pakistan, showing off the strong financial side of their campaign. The party was now determined to match the PML-N banner for banner, just as its leader flew around to address jalsas all around. Indeed, in many instances the Sharifs were forced to react to the attacks by the kaptan just as their followers on the street were ruffled by energetic assaults by PTI cadres.

The most amusing of these sights was when Nawaz Sharif was forced to remind his audience about his own brushes with the game, as a counter to Imran’s repeated use of the cricket terminology. “Cricket hum nay bhi khaili hai,” the PML-N leader began his lecture, taking the tone of a wise elder who is about to reveal the secret of life to an inexperienced bunch of greenhorns.

The pitch prepared, he then went on to tell his challengers the crucial difference between indulging in sporting pastimes and achieving a few feats by the people — using a not so bad shikari, madari, Zardari line to work up passions in the crowd. The ever-truthful Shahbaz Sharif, true to his reputation as the clever younger brother, had to go into the technical details of the game. He raked up an old Imran confession to declare that the kaptan was now trying to tamper with an election.

Indeed, Shahbaz was fiercely responded to but as historical evidence goes the most cutting rejoinder came not from a player but a spectator: from the PPP. The footage in which Shahbaz is allegedly dictating orders to a judge did make the chief minister angry — to the entertainment of the spice lovers.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

The Chaudhry in question is a health reporter in Lahore. Even though he is forever burdened with the heaviness of his beat, he has fallen unusually quiet these days. Prick him with an inquiry and he explodes: “Election! All we want to talk about these days is election. So what if children are dying in this city of a disease which could have been prevented?”

Clearly, the measles outbreak is the straw that makes it so very unbearable. For you know the species called journalist is not easy to move.

Chaudhry himself is a veteran of dim, dark and foul-smelling hospitals. This is where he spends his days, chasing and choosing stories, often intervening with a doctor on behalf of one of his friends who frequently fall ill. It can be said that breaking into a specialist’s chamber with the request for treatment of a patient gives him as much satisfaction as breaking the horror stories the hospitals are such big nurseries of.

He has seen death at close range more often than most would want to read about in the paper, reporting, campaigning, taking sides and ruffling feathers when he all along knew that those who decide are not going to be always receptive to his habitual calls for emergency.

He has trudged on willy-nilly, but he appears to be finally losing patience — in the sense of the helplessness of a man who must keep his eyes and ears open to the unending wailing around him. The brief stay and the silent exit of the ‘victims’ of measles has scarred him deep.

Yes, victims these souls are called. Patients also, but more often, plain victims. Over the last few days, a line of these young Pakistanis have died at Lahore hospitals amid all these thunderous election speeches about the need for discovering a young country.

This rhetoric has found prime space in the media, while little Pakistani citizens who failed to draw their elders’ attention to their basic needs during their lifetime die a by and large unmourned death.

Chaudhry’s reminders are brutal. Once again he talks about a blundering government which couldn’t keep its pledge to the citizens and broke its promises to the outside world demanding that we immunise our children.

The gentleman is certainly disturbed and could do with time away from the front he has been long fighting on. Maybe a dose of politics for some time. Or he could scour his territory for stories of hope: like the accounts of those who have managed to find saviours amid these shouts about the killers who can never be pinned down.

A detour to the positive would do those who bring us details from the hospitals a world of good but in Lahore of late there has been absolutely no respite. Disease has been advancing on us like battalions of an army.

Health is always a happening beat and the paper is never in short supply of horrifying stories of patients and the facilities where they are treated or not treated. The last few years have, however, been particularly busy for those covering matters at the hospitals in Lahore.

There have been deaths caused by the adulterated medicine distributed at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology, there has been a dengue epidemic, and men looking to ‘drown their sorrows’ have succumbed to a substandard cough syrup. And then there have been deaths by more natural causes, and also there has been a long doctors’ strike with its own deadly connotations.

All these incidents have been flashed in the media, the government has been blamed and inquiries and damage-control drives ordered. At the end of all these grand exhibitions in which our collective conscience is shown to have awoken, we are hardly any more vigilant than we were before we received these shocks one after the other.

As usual, the news of measles outbreaks a few months ago was received with quite a lot of sympathy for the ‘victims’ but no real alarm: as always the old defence mechanism was switched on and again it was something happening at a distance from our safe havens.

In discussions quite a lot of people here appeared to be trying to convince themselves that it was a disease that had its origins in the floods two years ago and just as the city had avoided the floods back then it would avoid its fallout now. Soon, the false fortress was penetrated and there were reports of deaths by measles in ‘our own’ Lahore.

If the city dwellers’ defence against the ‘distant’ threat was based on callous notions of personal security, official efforts at stopping the spread of measles were nowhere in sight.

It was as if the officials, too, believed that it would die down without causing too much damage — even though precious lives had already been lost before it became an issue worthy of being taken up at high-level governmental meetings and at public forums including parliament.

In January, the federal minister of health admitted in parliament there had been problems with the immunisation programme.

Yet, a city comparatively as well provided for as Lahore had to wait at least another two months before calls urgently went out for accelerating the vaccination programme.

Once again the government had other priorities. The focus was on the grand, all-important election and no one had the time for small matters as the immunisation of children. So what if the enemy had already raised its head? Democracy calls for sacrifice.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Humza Shahbaz and Monis Elahi. — File Photo

ONE of our teachers who had fled Lahore and settled in London before the glasnost in the 1980s had his own yardstick for measuring progress. He would routinely ask visitors from Pakistan: “What is the son of Mr A doing? How far has the daughter of Mr B gone in life?” “Achcha!” he would sigh whenever the answer did not quite match up to his expectations, which was quite often. “This is hardly evolution.”

The uncertainty the professor sahib’s inquisitive nature brought into a conversation about generational improvements is a feature of Pakistani politics. Pakistanis looking for evolution of politics invariably begin with a rejection of dynasty, in favour of a real political party.

But since it doesn’t work out this way here, their focus then shifts to locating the signs of brilliance in a political heir who they cannot do without: a successor who has some fire in his belly, a rebellious streak early on before he settles into his due place on the throne, leaving the rebellious job to his offspring. A bit like Jahangir as he stood against Akbar, even if in the fictionalised confrontation over Anarkali, in a blossoming of the motley crowd’s hope of achieving equality.

It is a difficult act to balance – carving out a niche in a running dynasty without disowning the benefits of royal lineage. Too much emphasis on the old rules could compromise the freshness of a Hamza Sharif or a Moonis Elahi.

Hamza is the next Sharif choice for the Punjab throne. Uncle Nawaz Sharif, apparently the inspiration behind Hamza’s speech and mannerism, has his eyes set on a third term as prime minister. Hamza’s father, who simply loves challenges, has dedicated the next few years of his life to resolving the energy crisis in the country. This leaves the Takht Lahore unattended, unless of course we see the truth and recognise Hamza Shahbaz as the rightful claimant from the incumbent royal family.

For the time being, Hamza, along with his cousin Maryam Nawaz, is assigned to delivering the youth from Imran Khan’s spell and to the family camp. But more than being a carrier of young dreams he promises continuity, which may be a slightly problematic slogan for those edging to rise in revolt, or who have already revolted, against the imprint of the old.

Moonis Elahi’s case is similar: he is there to facilitate continuity with a few innovations here and there rather than symbolise a transfer of the baton from one generation to another. It took his elders decades to overcome the mental block which prevented them to locate the potential power ally in Punjab in the PPP. And, while they may flash Moonis from time to time as a blend of tradition and modernity, they are in no particular hurry to give up their conventional style of politics and not ready to allow him to lead a surge towards the modern.

It could also be that the young man’s flight has been checked by circumstances. His trial in a corruption case was a setback just when Moonis was appearing to warm up to his role as a backup to the politics of his father Pervaiz Elahi and uncle Shujaat Husain. For the moment, Pervez rules with Shujaat at hand to give his blessings.

Maybe a role in the opposition, which actually doesn’t look too distant, would help Moonis Elahi discover his true mettle. It is far easier for a young scion with right pedigree to get noticed when he is spewing venom at those in power, rather than having to defend a legacy blotted by years in power. Shahzain Bugti and Akhtar Mengal in Balochistan both have a big enough cause to lead their dynasties into battle.

Incumbency is a problem Moonis shares with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the heir to the biggest dynasty in Pakistan whose kingdom is showing grave signs of falling apart. Since the desperation in the PPP’s ranks is most obvious, the calls for Bilawal to be his own man and his own leader are the loudest. It is said that for the PPP in vast areas of the country, it is ‘do or die’ – the all too frequently discussed connotations of this expression signifying the toughness of his task.

Bilawal appears to be sufficiently unhappy yet at the same time he is over-trained and overseen to an extent which can leave wards under-prepared. In the conversations of his subjects, he quite often emerges as the Saleem who must this time rescue his dynasty from the effects of experiments done in Akbar’s tradition of mixing incompatible materials together in the hope of creating a new whole. Reconciliation, the formula was officially named this time.

The concept has cost the PPP dear and, it seems, it is yet to be given up by the presidency. Consequently, constrained by the militant threats, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari is further prevented from taking on outside elements who he should be logically taking on now to revive hopes for his dynasty. Whether he has the ability to turn things around will only be known once he begins – or is allowed to begin — the job in earnest.

One other dynasty in a somewhat similar situation, the Walis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has been forced to withdraw from the frontline their new face, Aimal Wali Khan. The ANP chief has instead relied on his nephew, Amir Haider Hoti, to carry Bacha Khan’s flag forward – the pragmatic mama-bhanja (uncle-nephew) partnership being a more successful re-run of an alliance that once tried to take on the developing Sharif empire in Punjab. The partnership comprised Makhdoom Hasan Mahmood and Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani.

Gilani, the nephew in that team, has since grown up from his princely status to have a dynasty of his own. While, on the national stage, he has been reduced by law to play more of a ceremonial queen mother, two of his sons and a brother are contesting national seats in Multan. His famous uncle’s family in Rahim Yar Khan is not doing all too bad either. Gilani’s cousin Makhdoom Syed Ahmed Mahmood is the governor of Punjab and two of Mahmood’s sons are contesting national seats in native territory.

Similar local dynasties dot Pakistan with the same frequency with which the districts appear on the country’s map. Each district has a few of them, and stints through various parties are to them like the conquests young princes of the past would be sent on as part of their training. They take on each other, and sometimes some of them collect in a party to weigh it down rather than boost it.

The PPP was recently on a spree to absorb the big families of Sindh. In the end it got more than the Zardari kingdom could reconcile with. Many of the local ruling families left, but still, downwards from Sukkur where Khurshid Shah and family are in the run as well as upwards into southern Punjab, the PPP’s list of the candidates reads like an edition of chiefs of Pakistan.

Many of these families were forced to introduce new faces in recent years, primarily because of Gen Musharraf’s BA degree clause. Some of these new faces have hung around even though the clause is there no more while in some cases the elders have returned to the contest: like in Muzaffargarh where Hina Rabbani Khar, who was confronted with the threat of a vicious campaign, has been replaced by her father, Noor Rabbani Khar.

All these families have a legacy to guard and build upon. Bilawal Bhutto has two to choose from. The jiyalas, many of them heartbroken and in need of some magical potion to revitalise them, would want him to somehow bypass the five-year rule of the party and find a way to connect directly with his mother, Benazir Bhutto. In between stands a party that has been transformed vainly waiting for the fruits of the particular brand of reconciliatory and defensive politics played by Bilalwal’s father, Asif Zardari. If that is not a legacy big enough to deal with in between also stands a government that is extremely difficult to defend.