EDITORIAL: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI’s) story didn’t turn out to be as sweet as it would have been, despite the best overall performance of all parties in the cantonment board elections, if Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) hadn’t stolen its thunder in Punjab. Now, while PTI mouthpieces are forced to resort to excuses like the one that most independents, who came in third, were actually PTI loyalists and will return to the fold soon enough, their PML-N counterparts are interpreting the result in Punjab as a vindication of their anti-government, pro-people position.
PML-N is very relevant in Punjab, after all, and it managed to stay strong even as its leaders were in exile or jailed. In other words, PML-N remains more than a minor irritant for PTI. That’s bad news for the ruling party’s election planners, because now they will have to keep looking over their shoulders for the party that they tried to put out of commission as soon as they took power. But they weren’t very successful with the accountability machinery and now they are proving less successful than before with the people as well. So, if there is one thing that these cantonment board elections were good for, regardless of their limitations, it’s that they gave a good idea of the temperature of the country’s politics.
Independent candidates, who surprised with their overall third position, are going to be key, especially in southern Punjab where they are potential game-changers. PTI is the first to make a run for them, quite expectedly, since they are pushed against the wall and have no better way of increasing their numbers in the province. But you can count on PML-N to be mindful of their significance as well as it gears up for its own final dash for the finish line. These results would have given their high command a thing or two to think about as well, particularly the matter of the return of their supreme commander from self-imposed medical exile in London. Now that the party is sparking again in Punjab, you’d expected him to come when his subsequent arrest upon arrival can light that spark most effectively.
While news reports so far have said little about the reaction within PTI to the Punjab shock, except that the PM was not very happy about it and that the damage would be controlled when independent candidates join the party, there was the odd voice, quoted anonymously of course, that admitted that the party was beginning to lose support among certain segments of society because of its inability to solve their everyday problems, especially high prices. That’s where the spotlight will be, then, as what you do for the people as opposed to what you do to the opposition matters more for the ruling party in the last couple of years of its administration; at least one of which will be consumed by the campaign itself.
It is, however, important to note that the prime minister rushed to Lahore yesterday against the backdrop of the cantonment board election results. Asking chief minister Buzdar to work harder or pull his socks up is prime minister’s right approach to offsetting or minimizing the real or perceived damage to PTI’s popularity in the country’s largest province.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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