A survey conducted by Ispos Pakistan Pulse has revealed some interesting details about people’s likely responses to the result of the general election held yesterday in the country. According to it, for example, as many as three out of every four Pakistanis will accept the election result; only seven percent are not likely to accept the outcome of the grand electoral exercise while 17 percent will remain unsure. But I have my doubts about the Survey’s assertion that 67 percent voters of PTI will accept the result while only 9 percent will reject it.

Moreover, only one percent of PPP voters will reject the result and 94 percent will accept it. In my view, PTI’s dissatisfaction with the result will certainly go beyond the nine percent mark, given it is the principal or perhaps the only party that has not been allowed a level playing field from the day one.

Insofar as PPP’s likely response to the election result is concerned, it is increasingly clear that the party chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will voice his reservations loudly and clearly as he has already used his grievances in relation to the issue of a level playing field and the interim setup’s overt tilt towards PML-N to step up his criticism of not only the PML-N and the interim governments at Centre and in provinces but also the Election Commission of Pakistan. That the PPP has so far acted more shrewdly and cleverly than the rest regardless of the outcome of the general election is a fact. For example, it was PML-N, not PPP, that had found itself pitted against country’s largest political party, PTI, in the 2024 general election.

Sagheer Cheema

Islamabad

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024