| October 7, 2002 | Monday | Rajab 29, 1423 |
Genteel politics and city fireworks: KARACHI FILE
The last desperate hours: VIEW FROM MARGALLA
About Azad, Churchill and others
PML-N has an edge in NA-129: CONSTITUENCY PROFILE
NOBODY would really insist that it is too soon to be talking of the campaigning in the run up to the General Election-2002. Tomorrow is the last day before all electioneering, such as we have had so far, will be muted. Anyone found violating this discipline would be liable to go to jail. So this may be just the time to have a word, if possible two, about this saga as it unfolded and is now folding up in this city of cities.
THE PML-N is expected to fare far better than its main competitors —- the PPP and the PML-QA —- in the city’s partly rural constituency NA-129 (Lahore XII) on Oct 10.
With days to go before the elections, Karachi has witnessed one of the most lacklustre campaigns in its history. Even though a flag and banner war is raging across the city, there is something half-hearted and ritualistic about the entire exercise. Apathy and disillusionment seem to have taken their toll in this, the fifth election since 1988.
Even the most die-hard supporters of the main contenders in the race privately admit that the public response has been a little lukewarm. As usual, the campaign shows some signs of life in the poorer localities and more traditional mohallas but is all but dead in the more affluent parts of the city which traditionally have a very low turnout.
While people have been showing up at corner meetings, the numbers are significantly down from previous elections. Part of the problem seems to be the realization that the results are a foregone conclusion, both at the local and national level. Whoever wins, people say, the army will remain in the saddle. Locally, the MQM may not be generating the fanatical response it traditionally elicits, but most people believe that, give or take a handful of seats, it faces little real opposition on a majority of seats. The party may not get the avalanche of votes it did in the past but it will probably still be able to sail home in most of its strongholds. Meanwhile, the anti-MQM vote is also fragmented with the PPP, MMA and the two PMLs squabbling over second place in most areas.
The restriction on political activities has not helped matters. There have been very few large meetings in the city given the ban on rallies and the absence from the scene of three of the main players in the race.
The authorities too have been covertly playing their traditionally partisan role. The flags and banners of those parties that are perceived to be anti-establishment have had the strange habit of disappearing and reappearing mysteriously. A case in point is what has been happening to the banners of the PPP candidate for NA-250. One of his large hoardings at Clifton’s Schon Circle has been removed and re-installed with monotonous regularity, as have the flags of PML (N) candidates in many parts of the city.
Some of the smaller parties in the field are claiming that the lukewarm response to the traditional players is a sign that the city is ready for a change and that October 10 may yet spring a few surprises. This may well be wishful thinking as a tidal wave of support for a new force would at least have generated some noise by now.
Red notes don’t necessarily have to be hundred rupee notes. They can be notes with paan stains on them, or so a colleague at work would like us to think. She says one must beware of higher denomination currency notes if they have paan stains.
The reason for this, she says, is the hesitation among some shopkeepers to accept such notes. According to these shopkeepers, counterfeit currency is circulating the market and is so unprofessionally produced that the crooks are hiding their shortcomings by soiling the notes with paan stains.
So the next time you go and have some paan, make sure that you don’t use your money lying around in your car to wipe your hands clean.
Passing through Sharea Faisal around one in the morning from a cousin’s wedding a colleague noticed that all the marriage halls along the road were still abuzz with activity. At that time she was on the way to the groom’s place for post-rukhsati rituals and the much-awaited dinner and got home well past three. The next day she had work and the whole day was spoilt because she was sleepy throughout.
Late weddings are nothing unusual these days, she says. Hardly any function ends before one in the morning and there have been instances when people have returned home after one but without being served dinner. Festivities are always part of wedding ceremonies and no wedding is complete without at least half a dozen functions, and of course the numerous dholkis. Dholkis and mehndis often go on till late in the night, but receptions and valima functions would usually end by midnight. About a decade back one would have hardly heard of a reception dinner being served after midnight or the barat arriving after 11 pm. Normally, dinner would be served by 11-11.30 and the barat would arrive anywhere between nine and ten. This also allowed guests time to stay a bit longer for photographs. For guests the absence of dinner is compounded by the fact that even the drinks are not offered well past eleven. That, she says, may be tolerable since one can have dinner at home before going to a wedding. But when guests are told that dinner will be served then one expects it to be served no later than 11 pm. The worst is when one is coaxed into going to the bride or groom’s home after the rukhsati, apparently to have dinner there.
The colleague is understandably peeved that nobody seems to care about the guests who have work in the morning or have to send their kids to school. One can see children crying because they are sleepy, sometimes even hungry, at such functions. The other fallout of wedding functions that run late is that there have been many cases where people have been robbed while returning home.
Why we can’t have wedding functions at a decent time?.
The Food Court at Park Towers in Clifton provides good food at great rates. A friend who went there recently said that after one such feeding frenzy, a few of her friends decided to take a stroll along the adjoining road.
She writes: “In the process of facilitating our digestive system, we stumbled across the Sindh Archives building. Located right by Park Towers, there was nobody by the gate to stop us from our adventures. Upon entering the premises, we were greeted by two extremely rusted and broken vintage automobiles. A closer inspection revealed many spider communities and moth nests in both the cars that looked majestic despite the fact that they were on the verge of falling apart. Questions as to who owned them and why they were in the state we found them arose but no one was around to answer them.
“A little farther down we were greeted by six splendid green statues. The female figurines were wearing wreaths and appeared to be based on Greek mythology. The statues were under the open sky and caked in a deep layer of mud, bird droppings and a variety of other such things. Our excited efforts to dust these statues caused someone to finally come out from within the building and ask us what we were doing. We informed this man that we only wanted to look around..
“We walked a little further to be greeted by two statues, approximately eight feet tall, of Queen Victoria and King Edward. Poor King Edward’s head had been chopped off rather unceremoniously and it was only the seal at the bottom that gave away his identity. These two white statues looked much more magnificent than the others due to their size and quality of workmanship though being kept in the open had caused a great deal of damage to them too. Black paint was splattered across these figures and they appeared to have been taken out from their original places by someone in a very bad mood as the jagged bottoms implied.
“By this time our consternation about such lovely pieces of art being kept in such a bad state was getting the better of us. We demanded to be let into the offices to talk to the director. It was Friday and we were told that the gentleman was not available and we should come in two days if we wished to see him. An old man wearing sunglasses lying on a charpoy beckoned to us. The cars, he said, used to be owned by Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah and her brother. One was theirs and the other was for use by their staff. The statues were taken from Mohatta Palace when it was being made into a museum. Why were they not kept in a safer place or a museum? The old man said that the officer in charge of this matter had been replaced and since then nothing had happened.
“Why not auction them off instead of letting them rot, we asked. The old man had no answers while the other man — the one who had come out of the building — appeared to be getting edgy about our increased interest, and indicated that we leave.
“I felt a strange sad feeling as we walked out. Why, in a population of so many apparently culturally aware people, is nobody bothered about Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’s cars and statues?— By Karachian
E-mail: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com
Even in the most normal of election battles, noise and fury is not only expected but also considered a very genuine and vital part of this game upon which the edifice of democracy is raised and rests. That is how it used to be in this city. Indeed, campaigning here used to be livelier and louder than anywhere else. This time it has been as genteel an affair as one would expect electioneering to be in El Dorado or in Shangri La.
The more remarkable aspect of the activity related to the elections has been more visible than audible. What has helped us to feel assured that an election is round the corner is the display of election ‘symbols.’ These are all over, hung or mounted on every available place. However, such extravagance of enthusiasm is permissible or tolerable in election season.
One reason advanced to explain why the exhibition of party symbols has been on such a lavish scale is quite interesting and well worth sharing with others. This magnified display of election symbols is supposed to articulate what the party leaders, candidates and stalwarts have somehow remained unable to say in their campaign orations. Or, quite possibly, remained unable to think out coherently enough to put into the spoken and printed word.
To claim that Karachi is the most articulate city is not empty boasting and bragging. This city can also be loud, noisy, and occasionally even uncontrollably boisterous. None of those ingrained attributes were visible or perceptible in the electioneering this time round. There have been public meetings and street corner encounters with the Karachi voter who, once upon a time, used to be feared as a relentless interrogator. Have all those irrepressible hecklers gone on holiday — and that too in this season?
So far, this whole affair has been rather banal. And this is already the end of the road to the ballot box, so there is no room to expect any surprises. Some senior citizens that have seen this country through thick and thin, so to say, shake their heads in mild disbelief. Elections have come to Karachi at rather irregular intervals. However, the last decade saw elections coming thick and fast. Four general elections in one decade would be unthinkable by the standards of many notable democracies. It would indeed be interesting to know what our honoured guests, the ‘observers’ from the European Union, would have to say about this over-dose of democracy that we have imbibed.
Now we are on the eve of our fifth of the phase that has seen an upsurge of democracy. As the wise among us emphasize about the elections, you can never have too many of them. In fact, the more the merrier. Somehow, that has not quite been the case with us. In recent years, Karachi has witnessed a steady decline in the level of election fever and fervour. We have not heard high- minded debate from any corner of this mercurial metropolis. Nor have we witnessed street level sloganeering or verbal battles; not even taunts or jibes or jokes. Even accusations and allegations have been few and far between.
All of this has been in exceptionally refined taste. Those of us who have felt short-changed because of the almost total absence of election fireworks, have been provided with some food for thought by the two major fires in the city, one after the other. First, Lakshmi Building found itself on fire. The following day, Textile Plaza was ablaze. Two fires coming so close may be a mere accident, but it would be less than prudent to dismiss them as just one of those things and look forward to life as usual.
A brief nostalgic digression here: in the early days of Karachi, Lakshmi Building stood tall and proud on this city’s skyline. None of today’s high-rise giants were there. They are latecomers. This point is not irrelevant at this moment because Lakshmi Building should be considered as part of the city’s ‘heritage’, and as such, given special consideration and protection against preventable hazards like power line short-circuits.
An even stronger reason to be weary of accidents is that the next few days in Karachi are gong to be profoundly ‘iffy’, because you never can tell how the terror masters might be inclined to behave while we inch our way to the polling booths. This is an extremely sensitive time. Good to note that the city administration has been up and about. They have already identified many ‘sensitive’ polling stations in and around the city. Their reluctance to name them is understandable.
With barely three days to go before the finale of the election exercise, our security and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) cannot be too watchful. There is a promise that assistance from the military would be available. As in matters of health, so in matters of civil security — prevention is better then cure. It is all very well to advocate police and LEA vigilance and military assistance in this context. One must add, by way of a precaution, that being too officious has an effect totally contrary to polite public service and good governance. Public servants look great when thy also behave as servants of the public.
BENAZIR BHUTTO and Nawaz Sharif have so far been able to scale all the illegal and unconstitutional hurdles put up in their way by President General Pervez Musharraf and now they are virtually conducting the election campaigns of their respective parties sitting thousands of miles away. Musharraf’s spin doctors used to say that they have done an Idi Amin on Nawaz i.e., Nawaz would disappear in Saudi Arabia they way Idi Amin did. And Musharraf himself used to say that he recognized only one Muslim League, i.e., he would not let any Muslim League faction other than PML(Q) to contest the next elections. He made special laws to disqualify Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif and then he made another special law to disqualify parties led by disqualified leaders hoping that either the two would loose their grip over their respective parties or the parties would break up and disappear. Nothing like this happened. Unlike Musharraf the two young leaders seemed to have learnt their lessons from history. They decided not to give up, not to loose heart, come what may. They side-stepped every move Musharraf made to deny them and their parties an opportunity to contest the forthcoming election. And now they seemed to have succeeded in overcoming all the hurdles except the last one which is only three days away!!
Now their faces stare you from life-size hoardings put up all over the country and from colourful newspaper advertisements on daily basis. Benazir has even been able to address a telephonic press conference from London in Lahore the other day. Nawaz Sharif’s supporters on the other hand seem to have made effective use of the more popular independent TV channels. Those of their parties, who are contesting the elections, are promising to make either of the two the next prime minister of the country if their parties win the election. Benazir herself has said in her telephonic interview that the ARD component parties will form the government if they get a majority otherwise they would operate from a joint opposition platform in the parliament.
And if at all elections are held on October 10, people would indeed be voting either for these two leaders or against them. But, unfortunately, for the President those who would like to vote against Benazir or Nawaz do not have a clear cut option because those who do not like these two do not like any of Musharraf’s hand-made politicians as well, thanks to the military regime’s three-year long propaganda against all kinds of politicians. So, Musharraf’s plans to hold his elections without these two national leaders leading their respective parties have been effectively nailed. And he has even failed to keep the two from being considered by the voters for the prime ministerial position, notwithstanding his law banning them from becoming prime minister for the third time. The main reason for this failure has been the failure of his hand-made leaders to make themselves acceptable to the voters as credible alternative to either Benazir or Nawaz. Musharraf perhaps thought that since the nation had ‘accepted’ him as the leader after he forcibly took over the reins of the country, it would also accept for the slot of the prime minister anybody whom the nation would believe is being backed by the GHQ. But General sb, this is 2002. Things do not happen in Pakistan any more the way they used happen in the 1950s or ‘70s or even in ‘80s. It is altogether a different Pakistan today. The nation has learnt how to resist and succeed without agitating in the streets!!
The two — Benazir and Nawaz — sitting so far away from Pakistan have also been able to convince the voters as well as the international community that not only has the military regime committed massive pre-polls rigging but, if at all, polls are held on the due date it was likely to commit selective rigging on the E-Day as well, to doubly ensure emergence of a hung parliament. More than these two, Musharraf himself should be blamed for reinforcing this impression because of his failure to hold a clean referendum. After the shenanigans they have seen during the referendum, few believe him any more when he insists that he had not committed pre-polls rigging or when he says he is not going to rig it on the election day. His governors, the NAB, the CEC, the superior judiciary and, above the all, the all powerful Tariq Aziz, have jointly contributed massively to undermine the credibility of the October 10 elections.
And interestingly, if one went by the campaign speeches that are being made by the candidates from PML-N and PPP platforms, the choice offered by them to the voters is very clear: What do you want? Military dictatorship or democracy? Again, it is the military regime itself which has set this theme for the election by amending the Constitution to give an effective role to the Army in the governance. Those who support continuation of military dictatorship and are being promoted as King’s parties, however, suffer from an inherent disadvantage because for obvious reasons they cannot seek votes in the name of dictatorship. And this has rendered their voters completely confused.
In order to detract the voter from the main issue of dictatorship vs democracy and also to keep all the anti- dictatorship votes from going to the two main stream political parties, the government has also cobbled up an alliance of the religio-political parties called the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) which is trying to attract the so-called growing anti- American vote in the country. The belief, perhaps, is that an anti-American voter would be anti-dictatorship as well, for obvious reasons and if this voter is provided a choice from a platform having ‘established’ anti-American credentials, he would prefer to vote for such an alliance rather than go with parties which are seeking votes only from anti-dictatorship platform. But it is wrong to assume that there is any anti-American vote in this country. Despite the growing restrictions that are being imposed by the US on the entry of Pakistanis into America, it is still a life-time ambition of most Pakistanis to seek an American visa — even a visit visa—Onlooker
A FEW more bits and pieces from Khushwant Singh’s autobiography, Truth, Love and a Little Malice and I shall have done. About Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, he says:
“His evenings were sacred as he enjoyed his scotch by himself. He wanted his drinking habits to remain unknown in order to preserve his image of Inamul Hind... of Muslim India.”
“One day he (a cabinet colleague) was talking very loudly over the phone. Churchill asked his secretary to go over and tell Mr Brown not to talk at the top of his voice. The secretary returned to inform Churchill, ‘Sir, the minister is talking to Scotland.’ Replied Churchill very acidly, ‘I am sure he is but tell him to use the phone.’”
Again: “Indian journalists are generous with other peoples’ liquor.” (Singh might have included Pakistani journalists in the list).
“He looked me straight in the eye and asked, ‘So the Government of India has decided to raise its ban on me?’
“‘Yes’, I replied enthusiastically.
‘But Nirad C Chaudhuri has not decided to raise his ban on the Government of India’, he replied and strode out of my office, leaving me flabbergasted. He was that kind of man: poverty did not make him compromise with his self-respect.’”
“Bombay is much the richest city of India. More than half of India’s income tax comes from this city. Bombay is also India’s most corrupt city: more than half of the black money in circulation is generated in Bombay. It has more millionaires than the other three metropolitan cities put together. It attracts an endless stream of outsiders who hope to make their fortunes here. It also probably has more prostitutes and call girls than any other city in the world.... All said and done, Bombay is the most enjoyable city of India — if you can find a place to live in.”
On ZA Bhutto:
“I do not have to say much about the meeting with Bhutto except that I conveyed a personal message from him to Mrs Gandhi. She disdainfully ignored it saying, ‘He is an absolute liar.’ The meetings with Begum Para and Tikka Khan were quite memorable.”
“On the hundredth birth anniversary of Mr Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan and, therefore, a name hated in India, I produced a special issue (of the Illustrated Weekly of India), paying tributes to him, with his picture on the cover. An order of 10,000 copies was received from Pakistan. It was cancelled when the issue appeared. And entirely because, in a profile written by JN Sahni, he recalled his joining Jinnah and his Parsee wife for lunch at the Bombay High Court when Jinnah took a glass of sherry and ate ham sandwiches. Though true, it was not acceptable in Pakistan.”
“Amongst the wholly innocent who were picked up were Bhim Sain Sachar, ex-Chief Minister of Punjab, then in his late seventies. One thing Mrs Gandhi did not suffer from was compassion. The Emergency powers turned the heads of many civil servants; they became rude and tyrannical. There were others who, though unhappy, carried out orders issued to them without protesting. My friend Kishan Chand (lieutenant governor of Delhi) was one of them. After the Emergency was withdrawn and enquiries instituted against the misuse of power, Kishan Chand could not stand the strain. He wrote a short note in Urdu: Zillat se maut acchi heh —- death is better than disgrace —- and jumped into a well.”
“Gratuitous discourtesy towards editors had become the hallmark of the Jain family. They had treated their most distinguished editor, Frank Moraes, with the same lack of courtesy. Inder Malhotra and Prem Shankar Jha, both distinguished in their respective fields, were humiliated and forced to quit. Giri Lal Jain who devoted his life serving them and edited The Times of India with distinction for over nine years was shown the door with less regard than I.” (Mr Singh, too, “was fired one week before I was due to retire”).
What were Mrs Gandhi’s wedding presents to Maneka, Sanjay’s wife (the two were married on September 23, 1974)? They were, according to Khushwant Singh:
“Twenty-one expensive sarees, two sets of gold jewellery, a Lehnga, and perhaps the most expensive of all, a khadi saree made out of yarn spun by her father Jawaharlal Nehru when he was in jail...”
“There was another interesting thing I picked up about the women of Pakistan. Divorces and remarriages are much more common among their upper classes than in India. While coveting another man’s wife or having intercourse with her is frowned upon, persuading her to leave her husband and become your wife is no longer a rare phenomenon.”
There is much more in Khushwant Singh’s autobiography but I must end here. I do so reluctantly.
SHEIKH ABID RASHEED is an avid cricket fan. He has sent me the following piece:
Dashing batsman Shahid Afridi, hit the second fastest fifty in one-day Internationals —- 55 off just 18 balls —- including four fours and six sixes against Holland, in the ICC Champions Trophy match in Colombo on September 21.
However, another world record by Afridi went unnoticed, as he became only the second batsman to hit 150 or more sixes in one-day cricket.
With the six sixes against Holland, he reached a total of 153 in 164 appearances, just fourteen behind the Sri Lankan skipper, Sanath Jayasuriya, who has hit 167 sixes in 273 one-dayers.
Afridi, however, has the best all-time record. His 153 sixes in 164 innings mean that he has an average of 0.90 sixes per innings, which is far better than Jayasuriya’s 0.60 and anybody else in the history of the limited overs game.
Apart from them, six more batsmen have hit over a hundred sixes in one-day games. India’s Sachin Tendulkar is in third place with 130 shots over the ropes in 297 matches. Saurav Ganguly, with a difference of two sixes, is right behind him. Ganguly has so far hit 128 sixes in 203 one-dayers. The two hit those sixes at an average of 0.42 and 0.59 per game. The West Indian cricket legend, Vivan Richards, was the first to cross the hundred-plus barrier. Before saying goodbye to cricket, he had hit 125 sixes at an excellent average of 0.74 per game in his 187-match career.
Then come all-rounders, Wasim Akram with 113 sixes in 343 ODIs and Chris Cairns of New Zealand, who has smashed 107 sixes in 151 one-day matches so far. His average 0.77 is the second best after Afridi.
The last batsman in this list is Inzimamul Haq, who has clobbered 105 sixes in 273 one-dayers. The highest number of sixes in an innings are shared by Jayasuriya and Shahid Afridi. Jaysuriya was the first, with eleven sixes against Pakistan at Singapore in April, 1996. He also made the then fastest century off 48 deliveries in the match. But only six months later in Nairobi, Afridi not only equalled the eleven sixes record but also bettered the fastest century achievement by Jayasuriya. Befittingly, Afridi’s feat was against Sri Lanka.
ELECTIONS: What about them? Brief comment offered: a tale told by an idiot but without even sound and fury.
The new ordinance on defamation prevents me from saying things I want to say except that Chaudhry Pervez Elahi looks very pretty, especially when he talks about banishing politics of hypocrisy from the country. Henceforth I’ll write only about the dead like for instance father and son Bush and Tony Blair. Ain’t they dead? They are even worse. They are among the living dead.
PS: I have Mr AR Nagori’s second letter but more about it next week.
Spread over the Kahna Town Committee and the city’s qanungo halqas like Kahna Nau, Heer, and Haloki, and patwar circles of Raiwind like Ladheke Uche, Ladheke Nevain, Jehdo Dhair, Janjate, Ghang Sharif, Karyal, Jia Bagga, the constituency includes some areas of both the defunct NA-99 and NA-100. Except for 1997, the PPP and the PML-N have had close fights in the area since 1988 with the latter enjoying an edge over the former.
Both the PPP’s Zahid Akram Natt and the PML-QA’s Habibullah Warraich are pitted against a strong local PML-N candidate —- Sardar Arif Rasheed. Personal political influence of the Sardar family coupled with party votebank may prove to be an advantage for the PML-N man.
Political workers from the area say the people are supporting Sardar Arif Rasheed because he did not ditch his leader, Mian Nawaz Sharif. Besides, his personal efforts for the betterment of the people and the area are considered an added advantage for him.
“The votebank of the PML-N should have swelled because of the sympathy for what happened to the party and its leaders at the hands of the military regime since the ouster of the Nawaz government. The electorate can, and will, accept anyone but the party renegades,” say the PML-N workers from the area.
The constituency is faced with acute problems of under-development and absence of civic amenities like most other rural parts of the province and the country. Though the role of the future members of the National Assembly is expected largely to be confined to legislation, the voters of the constituency expect their elected representative to address their basic issues and problems when he reaches parliament.
The PML-QA, on the other hand, has pinned its hopes on what it calls as “credibility and integrity” of its leader Mian Muhammad Azhar. “Mian Azhar has made a big difference and lured voters into the fold of the party,” they insist.
The PML-QA is also hoping to poll majority of over 30,000 strong minority votes in some areas like Youhanabad of the constituency.
“Since President Gen Pervez Musharraf has given non-Muslims a right to double vote and brought them into the mainstream of electoral politics, they will naturally vote for the candidates put forward by the PML-QA,” claims Warraich.
He, however, avoided an answer when asked why would a good deed done by the president should help the PML-QA. Sardar Arif also believes that it would be he who stands to benefit from the joint electorate because of the development works carried out by the Nawaz government for the non-Muslim population of the area.
Compared to his rivals from the two factions of the Muslim League, the PPP believes that the party has created during the last few years a major votebank for itself. The party activists say the PPP had election from most parts of the constituency in 1993 and had given a tough time to the PML-N even when the former’s candidate lost election in 1997.
A visit to the area makes the PPP estimates look a bit too optimistic. “The Ghurki family, whose members have a history of contesting from most areas that form part of NA-129 on a PPP ticket since 1988, has developed some personal influence like some other families of the area,” says a resident of the area.
“But this time the Ghurkis —- Samina Khalid Ghurki, to be precise —- have chosen the neighbouring constituency which speaks a lot of the difficulties they and their party may have been facing from this particular constituency. So things are not as easy for Zahid Akram Natt, a new face for NA-129, as his supporter would like you to believe,” the residents say.
Zahid Natt, however, says he has generated political momentum in the area that would bulldoze everyone else.
“The past record, which by no means is praise worthy, of my opponents will prove to be a liability rather than an asset for them. They have neither carried out any development work nor visited the constituency after winning it in the past. We also have an additional advantage of a strong minority votebank in the area,” he claims.
If the non-Muslims, as is maintained by Zahid Natt, decide to favour the PPP on the election day, Sardar Arif may see the race getting too close to his comfort. But apart from Zahid Natt’s claim, there is hardly any concrete evidence that the Christian community of the area is planning to vote for the PPP in its entirety.
The candidates of the two Leagues, conscious of the importance of the non-Muslim votebank of the constituency, are also working hard to woo them, insisting that the “PPP does not have anything special to offer to the minorities that their parties wouldn’t do for them”.