Pakistan’s political climate has heated up — even more than the usual — after the no-confidence vote removed the ruling party from the government.

The past few weeks have seen almost everything; claims of American conspiracy — or intervention, depending on how one likes it; the ex-deputy speaker calling 190+ members of the assembly foreign agents; courts opening late at night, reportedly bizarre activities in the PM house on 9th March; and the sudden change in attitudes towards the establishment.

Captivating, if nothing else. Former prime minister Imran Khan responded to his ouster by showing his power both on the streets and on the internet to gather support for his narrative. On the other hand, the new coalition government has brought itself into the unenviable position of managing an economic crisis.

However, leaving the political and ideological debates aside, what we can say is that the events have gotten the populace’s interest. Be it the massive protests — initially leaderless — or the Twitter space featuring Imran Khan in which around 1.2 million people tuned in.

Imran Khan added more than 901K followers in the past 30 days, whereas Shahbaz Sharif’s count increased by 245K and Bilawal Bhutto’s by 168K

Those who hate themselves enough to be active on Twitter are all too familiar with this. Since PTI’s ouster, its supporters have gone full ballistic with their flagship #imported hakumat na manzoor. As per Talkwalker, a social media analytics tool, the hashtag was tweeted over 50m times worldwide, including 36m instances in Pakistan, during the seven-day period after the Karachi jalsa.

There was an undeniable spike in interest in not only the events but also the political figures. All the three main parties saw the highest weekly gains in terms of Twitter followers in four years, though there was a clear difference in scale. While PTI added 208,992 followers during the week of April 11-18, the PML-N and PPP’s counts were 20,108 and 6,764 respectively, data from SocialBlade shows. On the other hand, Imran Khan added more than 901K followers in the past 30 days, whereas Shahbaz Sharif’s count increased by 245K and Bilawal Bhutto’s by 168K.

Facebook was no different in this regard as PTI’s followers during the period jumped by over 302K, PML-N’s by 103K and PPP’s by 16K. There was also a spike in the people “talking about” on the social media website, as the chart shows.

Broadcasters witnessed a similar trend as people flocked to their preferred news channels to keep themselves updated with political events. While tweets from the supporters of PTI would suggest ARY was the only one to grasp the audience’s attention, the reality wasn’t as black and white.

ARY News was indeed the biggest gainer as it added 700K subscribers in the last 30 days, but GEO and Samaa followed with 400K each. The former again led in terms of views, with 454m, during the same period while the other two channels followed with 373m and 291m, respectively.

With such interest in politics among the people, one hopes those in positions of power will act more responsibly. But so far, there are no signs of that. For example, former planning minister Asad Umar tweeted how the forex reserves have depleted by over $5 billion since the vote of no-confidence was filed. Imagine if this is supposedly an honest man and finance viz, what kind of standard are we setting?

Meanwhile, the new information minister conveniently attributed the massive online support enjoyed by the PTI to a handful of originators and amplified only by bots. As if turning away your eyes from reality would help their cause in the next elections, whenever they may be. This is not to suggest that politics was much better in the olden days, but with social media mobs now rallying to their cause in hundreds of thousands, the effects now reverberate with far more intensity.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 25th, 2022