THE PML-N’s clean sweep in Sunday’s by-elections in Punjab, along with its symbolically significant victory in Haripur, is hardly a popular endorsement of its development narrative. With its main rival, the PTI, largely absent from the lacklustre contest, its victory, at least in Punjab, which it has dominated for the better part of the last four decades, was a foregone conclusion.

What was surprising, however, is that the party still felt compelled to deploy the state machinery to allegedly manipulate results for inflating its votes in many constituencies. The PML-N’s victory is real; but the method allegedly employed to construct a narrative of reclaimed popularity makes it questionable, even if it does not totally discredit this success. A victory that requires the absence of a credible opponent from the contest and a suspect voting process is without substance.

On its part, the PTI has done itself or democracy no service by staying away from the process. With the viewpoint that certain quarters would not in any case let it win the polls prevailing in its rank and file, its decision was apparently influenced by the persecution of the party and its leadership and the way it was denied its mandate in the February 2024 elections. Nonetheless, the boycott of the by-election meant serving the national and provincial seats it had won then on a platter to its rival.

More importantly, the PTI missed a huge opportunity to mobilise its popular support by conducting a rigorous campaign for its candidates. Any crackdown on its support base would have further exposed its opponents. Late PPP leader Benazir Bhutto had for years regretted the decision to give an open field to pro-Zia forces by boycotting the 1985 party-less elections. The PTI may also regret its decision unless it is still banking on a break-up between the ruling PML-N and the powers that be.

While its ‘overwhelming’ victory has delivered the PML-N a simple majority in the National Assembly and freed it from its dependence on its coalition partners for legislative changes, the by-polls have killed whatever little hope the PPP had of regaining some ground it has lost in Punjab over the past decade and a half. The only provincial seat from which it has returned its candidate is the one that was doled out in Muzaffargarh by the PML-N. That its coalition partner refused to accommodate the PPP in D.G. Khan underscores that it wants not just the PTI out of its way in Punjab but also its coalition partner which will continue to exist on the margins in the province in the foreseeable future.

In short, it is not just that major political parties have lost something on the weekend; democracy too has emerged as a loser in the process.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2025