IT is not the end of the legal road for the PML-N and Railways Minister Saad Rafique now that an election tribunal has ordered re-polling on the seat won by Mr Rafique in the May 2013 election. But it would have been better for politics in general and the PML-N in particular had the latter accepted that it was the end of the legal route and time to take the matter back to the political and electoral arena.

Unhappily, the PML-N appears to have dug in its heels, preferring to challenge the election tribunal’s verdict and trying to avoid a by-election in its Lahore stronghold — this just days after the cantonment local government election established that the PML-N has commanding support in large swathes of Mr Rafique’s constituency, NA-125.

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While it remains within the right of the PML-N to pursue the legal route, there are several reasons why accepting the tribunal’s verdict and gearing up for a by-election would have been preferable.

NA-125 is no ordinary seat. In the run-up to the May 2013 polls, it was considered a key battleground between the PTI and PML-N, with the demographics in the constituency suggesting sizeable support for the PTI.

The PML-N too considered NA-125 to be a vulnerable seat and Mr Rafique campaigned frenetically to avoid a humiliating loss in the city where the Sharifs have long personally involved themselves in the selection of party candidates and steering election campaigns.

When Mr Rafique won a resounding victory on May 11, 2013, it initially came as a surprise to many — if not the victory itself, certainly the wide margin by which Mr Rafique defeated the PTI candidate, Hamid Khan.

Subsequent reports from the constituency suggested two factors worked to Mr Rafique’s advantage in NA-125: Hamid Khan ran a listless campaign, while the working-class voters in the constituency abandoned the PPP and voted for PML-N.

Still, Mr Rafique’s margin of victory was shocking enough for the PTI to never quite be able to digest it — and to make NA-125 the centrepiece of the PTI’s allegations of electoral fraud, along with the constituency won by now speaker of the National Assembly Ayaz Sadiq, who defeated Imran Khan in Lahore.

That history is enough to suggest that if an election tribunal finds discrepancies in NA-125 — whether orchestrated by Mr Rafique or owing to the incompetence or laxity of election officials — it makes little sense to continue to dispute the issue in the legal arena.

Better a quick by-election to re-establish the PML-N’s bona fides in the constituency or allow the PTI to claim a victory it feels it was unfairly deprived of in 2013.

As for the PTI, perhaps this will strengthen its belief that the election tribunals and the judicial commission can and will act boldly when evidence is marshalled in support of the PTI’s claim.

At the same time, the PTI should accept judgements that go against its claims of electoral fraud.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2015

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