Yesterday, it was a historic day in the history of Pakistan when a democratic government completed its term for the first time in the history of Pakistan and interim government is going to transfer the power to the elected government of people. This is also a credit for a country that a power transition from an interim to a new government occurs smoothly and with the given procedures because this crucial stage is very critical and in countries with fragile democratic record and practices, such a power transition doesn’t occur so smoothly and different non-democratic powers put into action practices that harm the very soul of the democracy.
Although an independent commission was working for a transparent and standard elections, but the interim government had the tough task of holding these elections in the given ninety days. With the problems of terrorism, extremists, party clashes and other circumstances, it was a hard task, yet the interim government and election commission worked incessantly to profoundly shoulder this responsibility.
Thursday was the last day when the election campaign came to an end and all the election advertisements on television channels, radios and newspapers came to an end. Last two weeks were very busy days for all the political parties when they tried their best to reach to the different corners of the country and deliver their message to the voters. In this regard, massive public gatherings were held in which parties tried to convince the people to cast their votes in their favor.
Though the campaign ended on Thursday, bringing an end to one of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of Pakistan. In the month before the elections, more than 110 people were killed in different terrorist attacks in which not only a number of innocent civilians were killed but some of the election candidates were also assassinated. According to the reports, more than 77 attacks were recorded in different corners of the country. Most sensitive were the provinces of Balochistan where Baloch separatists have boycotted the elections and threatened to attack the election body and candidates. On the other hand, the northern province of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa was also under the attacks of Taliban and extremists where the workers of election commission and the security forces were attacked. This is also worth mentioning here that Taliban threatened three major parties of the country, namely, Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPPP), ANP and MQM and thus these parties were very limited in their election campaigns and could not arrange much big public gatherings for election. Same threats are still present for the Election Day and in order to prevent any serious problem, Army has been deployed in some of the sensitive parts of the country.
These elections are unique from the past ones due to a number of reasons. First is the emergence of a new party, PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) or Pakistan Justice Movement, lead by Imran Khan, the cricketing legend of Pakistan who lead the champion team in the Cricket world cup of 1992. Later on, he was busy in building the first grand cancer hospital of Pakistan where the deserving patients are given free treatment of this disease. Almost 17 years before, he decided to enter politics but the performance of his party was very poor in the last general elections of the country. Last year, he at once gained mass popularity due to his opinions about different national issues and his party held mass gatherings in different cities of the country. In these elections, it has emerged as one of the three major political parties of the country, along with PPPP and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML (N). Before this, there were present only two major political parties, PPPP, lead by charismatic Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated days before the last elections and PML (N), lead by Nawaz Sharif who became the premiere of Pakistan for two terms. But general public doesn’t like either of these two parties because they have not shown much satisfactory performance in their reigns and now people are looking for an alternate party. Along with these, there are also present a number of small parties that are strong in their own areas like MQM of Karachi, ANP of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and religious scholars securing seats in the rural areas of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa but they have never come up as the general representative party of the country.
Imran Khan is very famous among the youth and lower and middle classes of the society and their agendas have attracted a major part of the intellectual class of the country yet the competition in the election is going to be very tough. Both PPPP and PML (N) have their secure votes in different parts of the country and it would be very difficult for a new party to break down these loyal voters. On the other hand, different parties or groups have their own vote banks in different parts of the country. In the rural areas of all the provinces, votes are usually given to the strong and influential tribal chiefs and elders and a common person can hardly think of making a new decision. Similarly, religious scholars and politicians have strong influence on the voters of rural areas of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa where people take it as a sin if they did not give their vote to the religious scholars.
Media has emerged as a very strong and decisive factor in these elections. Almost all the television channels were busy in showing the advertisement of different political parties and their programs and reviews brought a clearer picture for the public. Similarly, Imran Khan has unmatched popularity on the social networking sites of Facebook and Twitter where large number of users, mostly including of young voters, paste different things in his favor and have played an important role in molding the general view of the public.
It is also necessary to mention here that former Army chief, dictator and president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, who was on his self-exile, returned to country to take part in elections. Before he left the country for his self-exile, there were many cases of terrorism and misuse of power against him. It was generally believed that these cases would never be opened against him due to the fear of strong Pakistan Army but after a week of his arrival to the country, he was arrested and sent to prison on a number of cases and now he has to go through the trial of all these cases. This step also shows that judiciary is working without any fear of intervention of a strong army or any other political factor.
On Thursday, the Ulema (religious scholars) committee of the country announced that almost 27000 scholars would convince the public to cast their votes in the Friday sermons in different corners of the country so that vote turn-over should be increased and public awareness should be increased about the importance of voting.
Anyhow, Friday would decide as who would run the country for the next four years but political analysis show that none of the parties would be able to secure any significant lead in the elections and there would be a coalition government in the country. Whichever party formed the government, it is for sure that an elected and democratic government would be in the best benefit of Afghanistan and all the neighboring countries.