ISLAMABAD: The results of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s local government elections have strengthened the hand of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) not only in the province but also in the context of national politics.
This was the consensus in background interviews where the overwhelming consensus was that if the PPP and PML-N remain major players in Sindh and Punjab respectively then Maulana Fazlur Rehman has demonstrated that he has made inroads into PTI’s stronghold KPK.
As chair of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) where he played on a weak wicket compared to other parties JUI(F) now may become a major player.
This correspondent talked to several PTI lawmakers as well as the rank and file with most appearing stunned at the scale of the JUI (F) win in the elections given the ridicule that the party stalwarts hurled repeatedly at Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s politics.
The party’s bad performance in the local bodies polls has forced the Prime Minister Imran Khan to call explanation from the provincial leadership of the PTI, they said.
A party leader who wished not to be named, maintained that the prime minister should realise that development packages and social uplift schemes such as Ehsaas Programme on the taxpayer money can never be a mean to shift loyalties of the voters. This, he added, was seen in the case of the PPP, which launched the Benazir Income Support Porgamme (BISP) in 2008, but failed to win the 2013 general elections.
He further maintained that any attempt to lure the religious far right voters by playing the religious card is unlikely to succeed in elections. Thus the attempt by the ruling PTI to play the religious card has not found an echo on the ground as has been witnessed in far right politics of the French Marine Le Pen.
Talking to locals in various districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, they stated that most of the PTI candidates were not even ready to contest on the party’s official election symbol – “bat” – and instead, they preferred to contest as independents, given the disappointment of the people over the party government’s poor performance on deliverance.
Till filing of this report as results continued to come from all over the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in the local government elections held in 17 districts, the JUI-F was leading with 19 seats followed by ruling PTI 14, Independent eight, ANP seven, PML-N three, PPP one, and the JI two, as per the unofficial and unconfirmed results of 55 out of the total 64 seats.
The opposition parties have bagged three out of four mayoral seats in the province.
ANP’s Himayatullah Mayar has been elected as the mayor of Mardan, JUI-F’s Sher Zaman of Kohat, while another JUI-F candidate Zubair Ali has emerged victorious in Peshawar.
The PTI lost the Peshawar mayor seat to the JUI-F with a wide margin. JUI-F’s Zubair Ali secured 62,388 votes, whereas, PTI’s Mohammad Rizwan Bangash secured 50,659 votes.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021