The narrow win of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's son in bye-elections for NA-151, Multan, reflects the people's verdict, clamoured the PPP leadership while opponents pointed to 20 percent voter turn out as general disinterest in a bye-election held a few months before the general elections.
Pakistan People's Party (PPP) candidate Abdul Qadir Gilani, was pitted against an independent candidate, Shaukat Hayat Boson, was supported by PML-N, PTI and JI. According to reports, the junior Gilani managed to win with a margin of a little over 4000 votes.
Opposition political parties downplayed the election results, saying the PPP was able to hang onto the seat because the opposition leadership had not actively canvassed for Bosan while Abdul Qadir Gilani's father had been "extremely active" in running his son's campaign.
Major political parties, including Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) who reportedly backed independent candidate Shaukat Bosan, said winning bye-polls cannot be taken as an indication of what would happen in the general elections because the turnout was just 20 percent, a figure which would at least double in the general elections as both Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan would visit the area to canvass for their candidates.
"The way the PPP managed to secure the NA-151 seat is no big deal," said veteran PML-N leader Senator Syed Zaffar Ali Shah, adding that PPP's real worth would be determined in the upcoming general elections. He said that it was the constituency of the former Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani and it could not be dubbed a difficult task for a party which has its government in the centre.
PTI's secretary information Shafqat Mehmood termed the neck-to-neck fight between the two candidates a steep downfall in PPP's popularity graph in Multan. He said that PPP should realise that it would not be able to muster the required support in the upcoming general election.
Despite spending Rs 1.5 billion as well as giving jobs to people it barely managed to keep the seat that was bastion of the Gilani family, Shafqat Mehmood said. Now it is for the PPP stalwarts to rethink about the roadmap for general elections, he added. "Just compare the bye-elections with 2008 general elections. At that time, Gilani had won with a huge margin of 25,000 votes, but the situation changed in the bye-elections and his son hardly managed to get a few thousand votes more than an independent candidate," he added. Rejecting PPP's claims that all parties had secretly supported the independent candidate, Mehmood said that his party had stayed away in accordance with its stated policy.