General elections are around the corner. However, the traditional festivity associated with the polls is missing. There are hardly any billboards, banners or posters in view and no evening gatherings in mohallahs and villages to discuss the latest developments over tea that have been a norm across the country for decades.

Several factors have contributed to this situation. So far, election campaigns of all major parties, except Pakistan Peoples Party, have been sluggish. A sense of uncertainty about whether the elections were going to be held in February had prevailed in the country until the Supreme Court intervened and a date was sought from the Election Commission of Pakistan.

One of the biggest parties, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf is facing a crackdown. Arrest of many of its leaders and workers had already threatened to make the campaigns lacklustre. To top that off, the PTI has been deprived of an election symbol and its candidates have to run as independents. There have been reports from across the country that many of them are not being allowed to campaign freely.

Under the circumstances the rival parties and their candidates have been reluctant to spend too much money on their campaigns.

There is also a feeling that the social media campaigns have made the traditional platforms – newspapers, radio, TV channels – useless. As a result, most parties and candidates have hired digital media teams to run their campaigns on various social media platforms.

However, the prime focus of mainstream political leaders is still on their presence on local TV channels and newspapers even though newspapers have not been a priority for many politicians for the last decade. Their emphasis has instead been on electronic media where people can see and hear them. To this end, almost all mainstream parties have developed their own systems to provide live feed to the news channels. All their public meetings are being covered by the media. This has eliminated the need to request every channel to send their DSNGs for live coverage that had involved heavy expenditure on the part of the TV channels. This way, all the parties are getting the desired coverage without any hassle. The news channels are running live speeches and giving their central leaders more airtime. In the past, the channels were forced to make huge investments to have eyeballs and money. This time around viewers, especially young ones, have turned to social media to watch the content they favour and the money is yet to flow.

Newspapers remain a concern for the parties that desire coverage on the main pages. Many political leaders and their aides are focusing on crafting statements that will make headlines both on TV and in newspapers.

The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf is in a unique situation. Its founder Imran Khan and many of its leaders and workers are in jail. Efforts are being made to keep him out of sight, sometimes by imposing bans on his coverage in the mainstream media. PTI leaders and candidates are facing persecution.

Although most of the politicians are busy in their constituencies trying to woo the voters with promises of introducing policies that will alleviate their miseries, many of them find time to regularly appear on current affairs shows to promote their agenda or to attack their opponents.

While top leaders are seen on TV screens, addressing rallies in different cities, in their individual capacity, most of the candidates have not abandoned the door-to-door campaigns. They are also holding small gatherings in their constituencies. Their digital media teams are making the most of the new tools to contact voters through social media platforms like WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Facebook, etc. Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf was the pioneer of campaigning and promoting its agenda through social media. Through its adroit use of the social media it became the formidable political force it is, particularly in terms of engaging the youth. Now, almost all parties have digital media wings that create and post interesting and innovative clips and flyers on social media.

Only recently have the main leaders of the major political parties started addressing large public gatherings. The news channels are flooded with election related content pouring in from across the country.

In the meantime, the political parties have had to set aside huge budgets for advertisements on news channels which are contacting the media wings of the major parties to grab their share of ads lest they should lose it to a rival. This election has afforded very little opportunity to the TV news channels to generate significant revenue.

Most of the political parties contesting the elections are a little clueless about the post-election scenario, not knowing if they would have the power associated with winning a general election. There is a general realisation among the democratic forces that much political space has been lost.

The writer is a senior broadcast journalist. He has worked with several news channels in Pakistan