THE people of Pakistan waited long enough for this election, part of which should have happened early last year — in KP and Punjab — and part of it late last year.

But even when the election date was announced, circumstances remained extraordinary. No stone was left unturned to discourage the voters. One party was consistently targeted, its top tier ruthlessly purged and the ones who finally made it to the election line not allowed to campaign. Most of the campaign time was spent underground, evading arrests and even watching their livelihoods destroyed.

If this was on the ground, in Islamabad, the mainstream media ran the most (in)effective disinformation campaign ever: the PTI would boycott the election; the party had disintegrated after May 9 and it had also lost support; it had no electables left; these nobodies and the lawyers who finally got the ticket had no idea how elections worked; they wouldn’t even have enough polling agents for the day.

But as usual, the politicians, the courts, the string pullers and the media underestimated the people, who have many a time waited to get their right to choose — they waited 11 years to vote for the PPP in 1988; eight for the PML-N in 2008, when they brought it to power in Punjab; and a year this time around.

Read the full op-ed here.