The 2018 elections

The 2018 general elections are round the corner. The political parties are attempting to mobilise public opinion to have more support for their party candidates. The aspirants for the party tickets are switching loyalties. They believe that their chances of getting elected will be high, if they are contesting the election through a ticket of a mainstream political party. For the upcoming elections, the PML-N and the PTI are the main contenders. The result of the elections will depend on how these two political parties manipulate the voter because the Pakistani politics revolves around personality cult, demagoguery, manipulation of public perception and use of money to purchase vote. But the PTI has changed this culture in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to a considerable extent. In the previous elections, the contestants from the platform of the PTI came from divergent social strata.

The party also encouraged the young generation and the educated lot from mediocre families to make it to the corridors of power. The PML-N has completed some mega projects in Punjab, but has despicably failed to reform the institutions. The PTI, on the other hand, did a lot for transparency in the institutions to rebuild them on solid foundations. The public perception is that the PTI government quite successfully purged corruption from government institutions. As a result, recruitments on various posts in government departments were made purely on the merit basis. The PTI could conveniently capitalise on all that it has done for the public welfare and convert it into a huge vote bank beyond the precincts of KP as well. The contours of the political scenario in the 2018 elections are likely to change, if alliances are entered into between various political parties. Popularly deemed as an anti- status quo party, the PTI will find itself in a quandary on that count.       

Khalid Pervaiz Raza (Booni, Mastuj)