Since the bye-elections in NA 21 Mansehra it was widely speculated that if PMLN fails to win NA 55 with a considerable margin it will be the end of PMLN’s presumed position as the government-in-waiting. A Shiekh Rasheed victory would have also helped PPP, PMLQ and the Establishment regain some of the ground lost in the past couple of years. However, none of that were to be and PMLN’s candidate managed to beat Mr. Rasheed and friends by over 20,000 votes according to the unofficial results announced by the Election Commission of Pakistan staff.
There were two slightly less interesting side shows - Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI). Since both of these parties decided to boycott the elections in February 2008 and had spent most of the last 24 months criticizing the government and the opposition equally this was going to be a test for their message. Challenge for JI were to prove that they are politically alive but unfortunately for them it isn’t the 80’s anymore and General Zia has been dead for 22 years, they managed only 3,109 votes.
Challenge for Imran Khan was to prove that he can be competitive in the mainstream with the big guys. Based on the unofficial results PTI’s Ijaaz Khan managed to bag 3,105 votes in a constituency with 333,928 registered voters - 0.93% only, which was very consistent with PTI’s performance in the past 14 years since their formation in 1996.
No. of seats
General Elections 1997 0
General Elections 2002 1
General Elections 2008 Boycotted
Concessions were made in 1997 general elections for their performance since the party was formed just a few months before the elections and there was hardly any time to organize a proper election campaign.
For the engineered general elections of 2002 organized by the dictator General Musharraf it is interesting to note that PTI had nominated its candidates for almost all seats in the National Assembly and they managed to win only one which was contested by Imran Khan.
They boycotted the general elections in 2008 and there were speculations that PTI will now do much better compared with the 2002 general elections since they have had an opportunity to promote their message through the electronic media. PTI’s performance in 2010 bye-elections so far is as follows:
Bye Elections 2010 Winning Votes PTI Votes
NA 21 Mansehra 36,622 4,582
NA 55 Rawalpindi 63,888 3,105
PF 83 Swat 7,505 3,821
Winning a seat would have been great but they weren’t even close to winning, in none of the cases were they even on the second position, in larger constituencies there impact was minimal where they bagged less than 1% of registered votes and had it not been for the celebrity party chairman they would not have been covered by the media. After observing their performance over the past 14 years it is fair to conclude that the political “beginning” for PTI and Imran Khan has “ended” and their future in popular politics has been placed in a box marked “Loud but Insignificant” and fairly soon even the urban youth will embrace this reality.
Our nation has always been interested in having one leader who would fix everything for them, we have never been fans of having a system and allowing it to function. Imran Khan when he first launched himself as a political figure was very close to what some people had in mind but having been around for a long time now he has failed to make any impact, which makes us think what happened to him and PTI? Here are some thoughts:
- Imran Khan has been the biggest problem for Imran Khan and PTI since he is so madly in love with himself that he has never allowed any strong political personalities to get involved with PTI. Mairaj Mohammad Khan a seasoned and well respected politician was forced to withdraw from PTI because of Imran Khan’s erratic behavior. All the office bearers listed on the party website are complete unknowns with the exception of Hamid Khan who became relatively famous during the lawyer’s movement in 2007.
- He displayed lack of commitment with the democratic political system when he supported General Musharraf after the coup in October 1999. According to Mr. Khan he also interviewed with the GHQ for an employment opportunity as the Prime Minister of Pakistan a job which was later taken by Zafarullah Jamali, Ch. Shujaat and then one Mr. Shaukat Azziz.
- He has failed to understand the mechanics of the election system in Pakistan and all his campaigns to date have been weak and idealistic. He has not been able to connect with the rural political culture where voting patterns are heavily influenced by families, communities and land ownerships.
- Mr. Khan has been mindlessly criticizing all political forces and hence has failed to form any political alliances which could have been the way forward for PTI since the party itself has no structure, his only partner so far has been Jamat-e-Islami whose student wing treated him with very little respect in November 2007 at Punjab University.
- PTI’s focus could have been the urban youth which has some patience for his rhetoric, but Mr. Khan’s decision to take on popular leaders like MQM’s Altaf Hussain and PPP’s late Benazir Bhutto deprived PTI of any opportunity to develop party bases in large cities.
- Mr. Khan’s rampaging self love was fully on display in his address to the Pakistani community in the UK in January 2010, which became a YouTube hit due to his insensitive and callous comments where he criticized everyone he could think of including the person who drove him to the venue. In his speech which sounded more like a poor stand up act he claimed that all dark skinned people are from Africa and they all look alike this was intended to be an attack on Mr. Babar Ghauri of MQM however, it displayed why he is not qualified to be a leader or a politician.
Clearly status quo is not option for PTI or Imran Khan and a different political strategy is needed since PTI is already on the list of endangered species. One of the options for Mr. Khan could be to have his own talk-show where he can be as self-righteous as he likes to be and continue with his condescending behavior.
If Mr. Khan were to carry on as a political leader he will have to either join a larger political entity (PMLN is already working on this) or allow PTI to grow naturally so that the party can gain strength at the union counsel level, they can then consolidate and be competitive at higher levels, a top-down approach which worked for Z.A. Bhutto is not working for Mr. Khan. The PTI experiment has failed the sooner they accept it the better it will be for Imran Khan.
In the meanwhile I choose to remain optimistic and passionate about Pakistan.
