GULAB Khan was cursing the rickshaw-wallas as he struggled to squeeze his cab through a chaotic traffic jam on Peshawar City’s main highway. “Where have all the traffic police disappeared?” he asked, wiping off a stream of sweat rolling down his forehead on a sunny December afternoon.

I looked out of the window, pretending to find the traffic cops, though my attention was caught by a monstrous billboard of a candidate for a National Assembly seat from Peshawar, wondering whether this was not a violation of the Election Commission’s code of conduct.

Cabbies are universally known to be great conversationalists, but Gul Mohammad, a diminutive man in his late 40s, with a salt and pepper beard, was more of a chatter-box.

Sensing what I was looking at, he quickly changed the subject. “Saheb,” he went on: “I think this time round the fight is going to be between the ANP and PPP.”

And what about the MMA, I asked rather demurringly. “Nobody is going to vote for them this time. They were no different,” he continued. “They have turned out to be a bigger disappointment than all their predecessors.”

“Who did you vote for in the last election?” I asked. “The MMA,” he said as he finally got through the traffic jam. “But not this time,” he quickly added.

Then he started railing against an MMA minister from his home constituency, who literally had nothing to own, but had in no time built a mansion with tiled floors and had come to own big expensive cars.

It was different in 2002. The Americans had invaded Afghanistan to ‘smoke out’ Al Qaeda. In Pakistan, the military regime had literally given a free hand to the pro-establishment religious conglomerate, the Afghan Defence Council, to rally the people in the hope of generating enough heat on the streets in order to get the best possible deal from the United States.

And while the Musharraf government went the whole hog to denigrate all mainstream political parties as corrupt, hounded by the National Accountability Bureau, an environment was created wherein the conservative right was made to look like the only clean lot available on the political horizon.

That was not all. There was confusion among the political parties’ rank and file. The establishment hobnobbed with some of them and deliberately kept them guessing as to the end-game, while the Afghan Defence Council was rather unwittingly allowed to turn itself into an electoral alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, say some political analysts.

“That was the time when mainstream political parties were put under media trial and subjected to harsh repression. The establishment caused a split in some of these parties, including the PML, the PPP and the ANP, and then the MMA was riding the wave of a so-called ‘anti-American sentiments’, agreed Afrasiab Khattak, a former chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and presently the ANP’s president for the NWFP.

The results of the 2002 elections were shocking for many a political analyst and for the mainstream political parties that received a terrible drubbing at the hands of the six-party religious alliance.

Put together, the religious parties had had a steady vote bank, hovering around the 20 per cent mark till 1997. However, it nearly doubled in 2002, when the alliance got 46.73 per cent votes in the NWFP.

The ANP and the PML (N) were the main losers in the 2002 electoral battle against the MMA. The PPP’s vote bank, however, has been shrinking and eroding in the NWFP since 1988 largely due to the absence of a strong leadership, political observers said.

Surprisingly; and contrary to a widely-held perception, the MMA’s phenomenal success at the hustings was not entirely attributable to anti-US feelings in the NWFP; it was a factor, but not ‘the factor’.

There was a degree of disillusionment with mainstream political parties and while their supporters did not come out to vote, the Jamaat-i-Islami’s well-organised network brought out their voters in droves to make the difference.

A survey carried out by the federal government soon after the 2002 elections backed up this assessment.

The majority view was they had voted for the religious alliance because they thought it would do a better job in terms of governance, would be corruption-free and would follow merit.

That perception however, seemed to have changed in the 2005 Local Bodies elections when the ANP and, to an extent, even the PPP regained some of the territory they had lost to the MMA.

INCUMBENT FACTOR: Political observers believe that there has been an appreciable change in the political scenario in the NWFP since 2002. For one, the MMA image has suffered tremendously, mainly due to the incumbency factor and poor governance.

Many people blame the MMA government’s complacent and softly-softly approach towards the creeping Talibanisation that led to the near-collapse of the law and order situation in parts of the province.

The holier-than-thou image of the ruling MMA clique in the NWFP has also suffered as tongues began to wag owing to a visible improvement in their lifestyle.

But perhaps, more than anything, the JUI (F)’s tacit support to Musharraf to get himself re-elected from the now-defunct assemblies proved to be proverbial last nail in their coffin. Whatever little credibility the MMA had, it was no more.

The ensuing wrangling between the JUI (F) and the Jamaat-i-Islami exposed them further.

“This split would prove to be the last nail in their coffin. They don’t need any accusers. They themselves have become approvers against each other,” Mr Khattak remarked.

Some JI leaders, who were advocating quitting the MMA, were initially apprehensive that the JUI (F), being in control of the mosques and the pulpit, would launch a vicious campaign against them.

That fear apparently has given way to optimism among JI activists following widespread public perception of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s dwindling popularity.

Also, unlike 2002, the more liberal and secular political parties, e.g. the PPP and ANP, believe they have done their homework and are better organised to take on the religious right.

Security and law and order issues, however, loom large with increase in the number of suicide bombings and threats by militant groups in the tribal areas to subvert the elections. This may have a sobering effect on voters’ turnout. The election campaign has so far been lacklustre.

And no one knows it better than the former interior minister, Aftab Sherpao, who survived a suicide attack in his home town, Charsadda, in April.

“This is a daily challenge. But then we have to reach out to the masses and our supporters and God willing we will be able to win more seats than in 2002,” Mr Sherpao said.

But while many political observers feel the MMA’s good days are over, some government officials warn that the JUI (F) is down but not out completely.

“The silent majority is still with us,” said JUI (F) candidate for NA-1, Peshawar-I and its information secretary, Abdul Jalil Jan. “The JI may have withdrawn its candidates but its workers would vote for us,” he claimed

There is a good reason behind that assertion. But for the caretaker government, the JUI (F) hand-picked bureaucratic setup remains unchanged.

In all likelihood the general election would throw up a coalition government. But there is one point on which most political pundits agree: It wouldn’t be the MMA’s government.