The Promised Change

By Hammad Anwar
Follow @manihammad

He came, he contested, and he lost. Or did he?

The election fever has finally passed and we (almost) know who would be forming governments in the four provinces and centre. As expected by the majority of pundits, PMLN would be forming the next government while its fierce rival PTI would be sitting in opposition with the second highest percentage of casted vote and being the third largest party in the National Assembly in terms of seats.

The results have left the supporters of PTI shocked and disappointed. After the emergence of the wave of hope and hype created before election after successful political gatherings in all major cities of the country, they expected much more. Most of them were clear in their minds that clean sweep is on its way, but it was this naivety which has hit them hard. For the majority the promised “change” failed to materialize. But did it?

Despite being an energetic yet critical-of-some-policies PTI supporter, I never expected more than 50-60 seats. Rigging has been part of the electoral process in Pakistan for ages and this time it was no different, in fact an improvement since the 90`s era. But as Khan, himself, admitted that it doesn’t mean that there should be re-election through the country or even in Punjab. PMLN`s victory is not surprising one, they still have support in the province and somewhat positive image. They have experience of contesting and winning elections in the province while applying different tactics depending on the ground situation. PTI mostly relied on the wave of change but even when the higher expected turnout, many failed to note that even among the youth, the rise in the numbers for rural youth were still greater than the urban youth. PMLN had strong and more influential candidates and PTI`s campaign wasn’t like Bhutto`s campaign where he moved the masses at the lowest level.

But this is not the topic of my discussion today. I see a lot of pessimism among the PTI supporters (though some of it has been offset by focusing now KPK) but I refuse to believe Pakistan has not changed. A new party has emerged and got reasonable amount of seats for someone contesting for the first time. But to me, the more important thing is that people like me are part of the process now. This wasn’t the first election when I was eligible to vote but why didn’t I ever vote before? You can judge Imran Khan on the basis of his statements or policies but the political atmosphere was too much friendly and cold before October 2011. Before that, our political attractions was a memo written to someone by someone, or beloved President`s illness or the “sasti rooti” schemes.

October 2011 changed the face of Pakistani politics for ever. The parties who have won should admit that even their youth ranks were never this active. The huge turn out from this large chunk of our population is the one of the biggest success from this election campaign. The class, that has been always blamed and accused of living in their nutshell, came out and voted. And they are out there after elections as well protesting what they believe in. And the irony is when they were not involved in this process, they were always criticised of being heartless and today when they are standing outside, at least becoming part of a process, everyone is too busy in giving them names and mocking them. Some people are never satisfied; their involvement is something which should be appreciated regardless of the political affiliations. If someone believes that they are wrong in their stance, and then let them struggle and learn. This isn’t the first or the last elections of Pakistan. The youth who voted today would be voting again in the future elections, so I hardly believe by creating classes or mocking them or anyone, someone is really making change.

Second and more important change which I have seen is in the biggest city of Paksitan i.e. Karachi. MQM has been ruling the country for good part of last two decades and except for a brief victory of Naimatullah Khan in District Elections, they have controlled the city. ANP and JI have failed to compete with them while PMLN is almost nonexistent there. This election, it is the first time there is some real presence of a political force in the form of PTI. True, they didn’t take any seat until the re polling at NA250, but they secured the second highest vote in Karachi overall. There are reports that a PTI candidate got more than 20,000 votes from Lyari, which if true is something previously unheard off.

The rallies after the elections against the open rigging in Karachi soon turned from pro-PTI to pro-Karachi rallies. Many of the people were still naive enough to sit back and mock them as they supported some other party or supported MQM themselves. The reaction shown by MQM and the loss of temperament by Altaf Hussain shows it was much more than just winning seats in Karachi. As AK Chisti pointed out “MQM is upset not because of Imran Khan accusing Altaf Hussain but it fears that PTI has dented some of its safe-seats in Karachi. They should accept PTI”. For me this is a bigger change than anything else. Even after the murder of Zahra Shahid, 17,000 people still came out to vote the next day. This is again a healthy trend, if the monopoly is broken, then other parties would have a brighter chance of having fair contest here and winning seats from this part of the country as well.

The new government (provincial and federal) faces number of challenges and it is sad to see the blame game or even worse the competition starting already. At the end of day, the people in government are answerable to every citizen of Pakistan regardless of the fact to whom they voted. At the end of the day, it is the country that needs to prosper, not one individual or one party. A healthy opposition might be what we missed for last five years but as of now, the selection of opposition leader is much difficult task than selecting Prime Minister. This weak and divided opposition might fail to deliver which would be very unfortunate.

The involvement of youth, regardless of political affiliation and the awakening of Karachi are two of the biggest things I take away from these elections. These were the last elections for this generation of politicians, they might be around at the end of five year term but all would be on the wrong side of sixties. But this wasn’t the last election in which I and you are going to vote, there are more to come. And my friends, THIS is the change we were looking for!