MUCH is being made about the historical significance of the upcoming elections, and not without reason.
Quite apart from the dimension of a civilian government completing its term and expecting to hand the reins of government over to another elected assembly, the electioneering is facing violence of an almost prohibitive nature.
In general there is an atmosphere of fear for rallies and corner meetings; in particular, several people have already died in attacks, with three parties that claim for themselves secularism in the cross-hairs of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Pakistan is hardly a stranger to elections being conducted in a violent atmosphere, amidst a strong sense of foreboding. Five years after the event, it is hard to shake off unsettling memories of contorted faces, smouldering vehicles and burning structures in the riots that followed Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
Nevertheless, the threats and attacks that are being borne by several political forces today take the fear factor to a new level altogether, given that the TTP is not against one political party or the other but against the very system of parliamentary democracy.
Whether it is because the electioneering is so constrained or simply because the time for it has come, the manner in which political forces are using the media in their campaigns is also a somewhat new dimension to Pakistan’s election landscape. Before the liberalisation of the electronic media during the early years of the Pervez Musharraf regime, advertising on the two state-run channels was not an option (except for the party in government, which has been known to have used PTV as its personal propaganda machine).
In any case, the penetration of television beyond the urban areas was never as ubiquitous as it is now.
I don’t recall television having played too significant a role in the 2002 elections, except that the general was all over it. And in the run-up to the 2008 elections, while there were some promotional ads here and there, there was nothing of the sort of organised election campaigning that is in evidence today.
The medium truly seems to have come into its own in this sense, and it would seem that a version of the marketing/brand manager and media campaign organiser is now an indispensable part of a political party gearing up to contest elections.
Generally, the ads being run by various political parties show reasonable recording and editing qualities, with input from video professionals and singer celebrities. And it does need to be conceded that they constitute a welcome diversion from the nitpicking that is a feature of our news channels, as well as a sort of anthropological insight into the party’s hive-mind.
But as on the grandstand, where political leaders have traditionally tried to build their own case by attempting to weaken that of their opponents, so on television, parties are succumbing to the temptation of playing dirty.
A notable attempt in this regard is airing these days: it’s an edited-together sequence of an opposing political leader at different occasions over the years, announcing that he’ll bring loadshedding to an end in so many days, or so many months, or so many years. Strung together like this, the clips do show up the randomness of his claims and indicates that they were crowd appeasers rather than underpinned by any real planning.
There are similar maligning attempts across the political spectrum, running as advertisements in the print and electronic media. But they add an unfortunate feeling of hitting below the belt — though some would argue that this, precisely, is politics in Pakistan.
Yet, America’s experience should be kept in mind: the game of undermining your opponent gets very dirty, very fast, and in the US it led to a backlash from the voters, many of whom went for the underdog.
Elections everywhere generate mini-economies where certain sectors suddenly find themselves with more work. In Pakistan, these include printers that handle posters and banners, flag-makers, panaflex manufacturers etc.
If the trends evident now persist, as they are bound to, then to this list has been added not just the television channels that earn revenues off such advertising, but also smaller players in the field such as cameramen, sound and video editors, etc.
The social media too are being used in the campaigning process in Pakistan for the first time on this scale. Whether or not they will have an effect on actual voting trends remains to be seen, for the social media are largely an urban phenomenon while vast swathes of the voting population live in the rural areas.
But for the class that thrives on Twitter and Facebook, the elections have become that much more personal. Many argue that reading a tweet by a politician is much more one-to-one than hearing him on television (though I disagree).
Yet here too, modern times require the public to navigate a sharp learning curve. A couple of videos I’ve seen circulating on the web appear to be endorsements of certain political parties or particular leaders by non-partisan (ie not associated with that party) supporters.
There is no way of telling whether or not this is in fact the case, but certainly the internet provides a great deal of freedom to mislead or misrepresent.
Similarly, politicians that are making so many promises through their social media cells would be wise to keep in mind that what goes on the web stays there for ever, just like what’s captured on a television camera is always available to be revisited as part of the public record. There is some evidence that the country’s political classes have matured; the next logical step is to remember that promises are made to be kept, and the electorate has a long memory.
The writer is a member of staff.
hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com