leadership has set three goals for itself: dodging accountability, keeping the gravy train on mega-projects running and offering only passive resistance to the GHQ (no active resistance). The PML-N’s political machine between Rawalpindi and Multan, with 100 National Assembly seats, is fully intact. The PML-N’s political machine between Multan and Rahim Yar Khan, with 48 National Assembly seats, is better oiled than any other party in the region.
The PML-N is halfway through its tenure but has next to nothing to show for it. Khawaja Asif and Khaqan Abbasi have already begun externalising their failure on to the Planning Commission and Nepra. Looks like time is running out for the PML-N to put its act together.
PTI: Thirty-five percent of the PTI’s voters are in the 18 to 29 age bracket. Fifteen percent of the PTI’s voters have graduate or post-graduate degrees. Outside of these two largely urban segments of voters PTI has not been able to put together rural thana-kutchery political machines in order to compete with the PML-N in close to 200 rural National Assembly seats. Yes, as income and education levels grow, the PTI does sound like a party of the future.
PPP: The party leadership had set just one goal for itself: money. And the party leadership has been very successful at that. Thirty-five percent of the PPP’s voters are illiterate; more than any other party. Twenty-two percent of the PPP’s voters are poor, extremely poor. In that sense, the PPP would want to keep Pakistanis illiterate and poor. It is, however, unfortunate that the only liberal political entity on the national scene has now become a Sukkur-to-Thatta party (this region has 40 National Assembly seats with high illiteracy and poverty).
The ‘brick strategy’ did not work and using Bilawal as Zardari’s bogeyman doesn’t seem to be working either. The PPP needs chemotherapy, not aspirin.
MQM: Altaf Hussain is in more trouble than ever before – murder charges plus money laundering. The MQM has its political face intact but the sector commander based organisational infrastructure has been badly disrupted.
For the GHQ, ‘time is flying like an arrow’. And for our political parties, ‘fruit is flying like bananas’.
The writer is a columnist based in Islamabad.
Email: farrukh15hotmail.com. Twitter: saleemfarrukh