This refers to Business Recorder editorial "Is this democracy affordable?" carried by the newspaper yesterday. It is true that never before in the parliamentary history of Pakistan a by-election witnessed so much sound and fury, not even the one to NA-246 last April, as has the NA-122 this past Sunday. No doubt, it was a fierce neck to neck contest between PML-N candidate Sardar Ayaz Sadiq and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's Aleem Khan, with Pakistan People's Party candidate trailing far behind.
The PML-N victory is not a real victory in the sense that not only has its candidate for NA-122 managed to retain it by winning narrowly, it has lost a provincial assembly seat that originally belonged to it. Moreover, its candidate for Okara's NA seat lost by a huge margin against an independent candidate. The results, therefore, do not contribute to PML-N's popularity. The NA-122 results have not left PML-N's chief campaigner for by-elections Hamza Sharif in a position to claim that "one more PML-N candidate has won by a margin of over 40,000 votes."
Insofar as NA-122 by-election was concerned, the newspaper has highlighted a disturbing fact: "How come for good one month the country's political elite did nothing but planned winning this by-election, thus effectively shifting far more critical matters of national importance to the backburner." No doubt, the Punjab by-elections have thrown up some valuable lessons for our political elite to learn prior to the 2018 general elections.