LAHORE, Oct 3: The generally lacklustre election campaign at many places, including Lahore, traditionally a centre of lively politics, has prompted widespread speculation of a low turnout during the polls.

Reports of dull electioneering and lack of enthusiasm amid seat adjustments and efforts to strengthen traditional strongholds, mostly featuring old faces and sugarcoated promises, have begun to provoke much concern.

This is despite the repeated assurances from the highest quarters about steps to ensure the fairness and transparency of the general elections. Now even the chief election commissioner, at the centre of election arrangements, seems to have serious doubts about a reasonable turnout, going so far as to emphasize that parties should bring out the people from their homes. This shows the extent of dismay over the people’s lack of interest in the election activity.

The absence abroad of top leaders of the PPP and the PML-N, having crowd-pulling potential, has had its effect, but the other senior figures of these other parties, apart from the charges of pre-poll rigging, have made no energetic efforts to mobilize the people and inject some gumption in the campaign.

The task was very important in view of the stakes involved. Barring the MMA, the first-ever electoral grouping of six religious parties, the other political parties claiming to be struggling for the restoration of democracy paint a fragmented picture. There apparently has been little effort by them even to forge some broadbased arrangement for electoral purposes viz-a-viz the challenge posed to them by organizations and elements which stand to benefit from the disarray.

Party stalwarts have been accusing each other and even threatening to file defamation suits, which seems really strange at such a time. The situation might as well leave the field wide open for the very parties they are deriding for being in league with the powers that be and for hurdling substantive change in the body-politic.

In view of the prevailing situation, there was all the more reason that the political parties, particularly the bigger ones, should have taken extra pains to bring out the people from their homes so that a better rapport with the electorate could have been established both in their own interests as well as in the interest of wider political participation. But it must be acknowledged at the same time that even low-key campaigning by them in the face of the odds they have dwelt on time and again is credit-worthy in itself, even if prompted by motivations of personal or party survival.

Admittedly, public disillusionment with politics has been growing and there is much to justify it. The main parties in the fray, after all, had formed governments twice in the recent past, while the basic socio-economic problems, whose solution is the touchstone of a government’s achievements, are where they were before. Matters may in fact have gone from bad to worse.

Issues that primarily shape an electorate’s perception of a political party during its term in office, are showing no signs of easing. On the other hand, the economy is weighed down by crippling foreign debt and lack of investment.

The parties’ past performance has provided little promise of an escape from this bind, nor does their current approach to vital issues offers much hope of providing a way out and bridging the public-party credibility gap that has developed over the last few years.

Tall talk, of course, cannot be excluded during election time, but most parties’ high-sounding promises are generally devoid of a realistic approach expected of a mature leadership which is not shy of admitting its shortcomings and failures and also educates the people on the causes behind its dismal performance in the past. While holding forth on eliminating unemployment from public platforms, political leaders conveniently ignored the fact how difficult the task is.

Across the country, there is mushroom growth of private schools and colleges, even universities, but no political leader or party for that matter has ever pondered what would be the fate of the thousands of students passing out from these institutions with high hopes in a barren job market. Nor have they been able to suggest any strategy for linking technical and general education to job opportunities.

Most political leaders, as a recent study has shown, have adopted a firm stand on issues like the role of the military as far as pre-poll statements are concerned, but interestingly their manifestoes are either silent in this regard or these issues are not a top priority.

Whether the voters take the pledges seriously or decide to vote on the strength of a party programme is open to speculation. But a voter’s choice is mainly influenced by messages coming from national and constituency levels.

The desire for fulfilment of civic needs predominates at the latter tier.

The crux of the matter is that public skepticism overall seems to have been increasing because the benefits of various policies in the past have not filtered down to the grassroots level. There is much official extravagance the people greatly resent, not to mention the ubiquitous corruption that blights their lives. Against this background, the government’s approach should have been to inculcate in the people that it sincerely believed in genuine transfer of power to the people, which is what elections in a democratic polity are all about.

Misgivings among parties whether the polls will be a step towards true democracy or whether they will be another exercise towards controlled democracy, like Ayub’s, can be very disconcerting and demoralizing.

The government’s approach has not been very reassuring on this score. Right on the eve of the elections, the Punjab governor was appointing an adviser, while the federal government had earlier taken key steps such as,among other things, the announcement of the labour policy and the NFC award. These tended to suggest that there was to be continuity in the policy and the substance of governance and that elections, which are a means for change, may not after all have an effective bearing on the set-up.