By-poll results

Initial results from the by-elections held for 35 national and provincial assembly seats on Sunday show that the country is still evenly divided between the PTI and the PML-N. Of the 11 seats for the National Assembly, both parties won on four seats each. The PML-N is likely to pick up five seats in the Punjab Assembly and one in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly with the PTI getting four and five respectively. While the overall balance of power in the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly has not been changed by these results, the PML-N will be by far the happier of the two parties. It has cut into the PTI’s majority and picked up seats that the PTI had won in the general elections. Of particular concern to the ruling party will be the fact that it lost two of the four seats that had to be vacated by Prime Minister Imran Khan. Imran’s narrow win by 600 votes over Khawaja Saad Rafique in the NA-131 constituency in Lahore turned into a 10,000-vote win for Rafique over Musharraf-era holdover Humayun Akhtar Khan. The seat Imran vacated from Bannu was won by the MMA. This shows that the PTI is still overly reliant on the personal popularity of Imran and does not have the bench strength of other parties. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry blamed the barring of Imran Khan from active campaigning by the Election Commission of Pakistan for the relatively poor results. Although he meant it as a justification, it is actually an indictment of the lack of depth in the party.

The turnaround could also indicate a slight souring on the PTI as its heady promises of instant gains have not yet been fulfilled. It was equally telling that almost all the candidates put up by the PTI were relatives of those who had vacated their seats. There has been grumbling from grassroots workers of the party that they are being ignored in favour of ‘electables’ and the by-elections seem to confirm that. The PML-N was at a real disadvantage in the by-elections as its chief Shahbaz Sharif is imprisoned and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was not even allowed to cast his vote because he did not have his CNIC. That it still out-performed the PTI is a sign that the government may be weaker than previously thought. The PTI’s honeymoon period is now over and if it wants to retain its support it will have to move beyond promises and deliver actual results.