A FIGHT over assembly seats in Azad Jammu and Kashmir has laid bare what seem to be some deep resentments between the PPP and PML-N. Despite being ruling coalition partners in Islamabad, the two parties have engaged in a public war of words following the first phase of polling in AJK, completed on July 27. Rather startlingly, the PPP has openly accused the PML-N of using the administrative machinery to perpetrate electoral fraud in the Mirpur polls. Speaking at a workers’ convention in Muzaffarabad, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari alleged that his party’s mandate was “stolen” through widespread administrative manipulation and polling violence. The party’s central secretary general, Nayyar Bokhari,separatelydemanded that the AJK Election Commission hold off on notifying winners until irregularities had been investigated, alleging that “winning seats were gifted to the PML-N” using manipulated administrative tallies. PPP leaders have drawn explicit comparisons to the Form 47 controversies that marked the 2024 general election. The PML-N, in response, has chosen to remind the PPP of the ‘spirit of democracy’, with federal Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal dismissing Mr Bhutto-Zardari’s remarks as “immature” and “undemocratic”, while Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz has ‘advised’ the PPP to be graceful in defeat.

It remains to be seen how long the acrimony lasts. The last round of the AJK election is, barring any misfortune, scheduled for Aug 10. Will it carry on beyond that, and if so, how will it affect the parties’ relationship at the centre? Perhaps one should not get carried away with the speculation. After all, the two parties have, for all their differences, invariably found a modus vivendi in the past. No matter the crimes of moral turpitude they routinely accuse each other of, they manage to set aside their differences to sit at the same table when it is time to divide the spoils of power. It is also a sign of how impoverished Pakistan’s democracy has become that accusations of serious electoral fraud, and, what prima facie seem to be open admissions that the federal legislature was not fairly elected, are now shrugged off as if they do not matter at all. And this is perhaps why the PPP’s protestations are being viewed publicly as the bellyaching of a jilted partner rather than a party taking a political or moral stance. Perhaps this should be expected when politics is surrendered to expediency.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2026