Illustration by Abro
Illustration by Abro

After the conclusion of last Sunday’s by-elections on eight National Assembly (NA) seats, a plethora of reactions from analysts were aired in the media. The by-polls were being held on seats that the populist Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) had resigned from after the former prime minister and PTI chairman Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022.

The by-polls were an odd occurrence because, on seven of the eight seats, Khan was the party’s candidate. What’s more, so far, he has no plans of returning to parliament. This was the absurd bit. Khan won six of the seven NA seats that he contested and he will have to vacate all of them, since he technically already holds another seat in the NA. If his earlier resignation is accepted, this will still trigger another six by-elections.

A NA seat in Karachi and one in Multan won by PTI in 2018 were lost. One of them by Khan. Also, Khan’s victories on two NA seats in the PTI-controlled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) were not as large as expected. So what does this all mean?

Most analyses by ‘experts’ were rather disappointing. At least till the writing of this piece, no one mentioned the low voter turnout in a lot of constituencies. Indeed, one expects this in a by-election but, it seems, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) voters did not come out in the manner the party was expecting. Or was it?

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is touting winning eight of the 11 seats in the recent by-elections a resounding victory. But is it really?

The PML-N is the largest party in the anti-PTI coalition regime in Islamabad. Its stronghold is the Punjab. Yet, the PML-N’s election campaign was lukewarm. Apart from the fact that the regime it is heading is faced with serious crises on various fronts, perhaps the party didn’t see any rational reason to invest large amounts of its resources for a meaningless election, really.

The PML-N’s by-poll defeat on all NA seats in Punjab does not carry any functional repercussions for the party, because even a clean sweep by PTI could not have dented this government’s majority in parliament.

Khan will have to vacate at least five of the six seats he won. This means a gain of just one seat. But he already had a seat before he resigned. It’s still his. This means, if he does decide to return to parliament, his party will have to contest a by-election for that seat. Or, if he retains his old seat, then his party will have to contest by-polls on all the six seats that he won last week.

On the other hand, the PML-N is convinced the current government will be able to survive till the next general elections in August 2023, and do enough to somewhat revive the troubled economy that Khan’s regime left behind. The PML-N is also expecting the party chief Nawaz Sharif to return from exile and regenerate its vote-bank with the help of his popular daughter Maryam.

Most ‘independent experts’ were hyperventilating about Khan’s performance in the by-polls. But the PML-N seemed rather relaxed. Nevertheless, lately, many experts have developed an irksome style in which they go on a lecturing spree, rather than actually analysing an election in a more informed manner.

Out came the cliches: ‘Grabbing the government was a bad idea’; ‘Khan is incredibly popular’, etc. Of course, taking over the reins of the government was difficult, considering the mess left behind by Khan when he was PM. Much has already been said about this ‘blunder’. Heck, even Nawaz didn’t want the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) coalition to take over. So what’s so insightful about that?

One has been hearing about this ‘blunder’ for months now. All one gets to hear from most experts these days is a lot of groaning. And then out comes a begrudging appreciation for the manner in which Khan has turned the popularity contest in his favour.

Indeed, but this kind of popularity is largely emotional in nature. It is tough to sustain. And Khan knows that. Thus, his insistence on an early election. He fears that if the PDM-PPP regime manages to somewhat improve the economy, and Nawaz returns, his narrative will begin to erode.

One ‘respected expert’ tweeted that Khan will sweep the next general election. Yes, his party might bag a majority if he alone decides to contest 80 percent of all NA and provincial assemblies seats. Also, if there is no Nawaz in the mix and the elections are held very, very early. But if Khan wanted to use the by-poll results to press for early elections, I’m afraid the results are not really that convincing.

Consider: Despite running a lacklustre campaign, the PML-N came a close second on many constituencies in Punjab. Only a few of Khan’s victories were big. The same was the case in two constituencies in KP. One can thus assume that, had there been other PTI contestants instead of Khan alone, they would have mostly likely lost in at least three additional constituencies.

Just days before the by-polls, a Karachi-based analyst confidently predicted that, since Khan was contesting from Malir in Karachi, the PPP had no chance there. Well, Khan lost by over 10,000 votes. Its candidate in Multan, considered to have become a PTI stronghold, lost by at least 20,000 votes.

My take on all this is that, had Khan not contested on those seven seats, his party would have lost a lot more than two NA seats. It would have lost at least two in KP, and one in Punjab. If we add the two that it eventually lost, the score would have been 5-3 in favour of PDM/PPP.

Another point that the now emotional (more than empirical) analysts aired was that it was an alliance against a single party. As any more experienced students of electoral dynamics in Pakistan would tell you, people usually do not vote for alliances, but parties.

The Awami National Party (ANP) in KP did not receive a bus-load of votes from the supporters of other PDM parties. The same was the case with the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam-Fazlur Rehman (JUI-F) and the PML-N. In Multan, over 90 percent of the votes that the PPP candidate received came from rejuvenated PPP voters and even from lapsed PTI voters. The same happened in Malir.

PTI’s performance in the by-polls was really not that impressive. What’s more, the PDM government gained two additional seats in parliament, further bolstering its numbers. If the elections are held in the middle of next year, the best that Khan can expect is a hung parliament. But one headed by an anti-PTI coalition.

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 23rd, 2022

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