Whatever explanations the PTI leadership might offer for its discomfiture, the party has been badly mauled in the first phase of the Local Government elections and that too in KP which it presented as an example of its outstanding performance. No spin given by the party’s ministers and spokespersons can undo what happened on Sunday. Not that the party had not made preparations for the polls. The PM had himself visited Governor’s House about two weeks back defying ECP’s directives. He announced projects and distributed cheques as he congratulated the KP government for extending free health insurance to 100 per cent population. It appears that all the propaganda by the PTI failed to cover up the ground realities like the back breaking decrease in people’s purchasing power and rampant unemployment.
The PTI’s debacle in KP would have wide ranging impact on national politics. It would provide a lease of life to an exhausted and divided opposition. Contrarily it would demoralize PTI legislators and workers who are already finding it difficult to defend the party’s policies among the masses. There would be rethinking among the ruling party’s allies and the ‘electables’ who were made to join the PTI on the eve of the elections. The defeat would also force those who have long been on the same page with the party to rethink.
The elections were marred by violence leading to five dead and numerous injured. The forced boycott of elections at some of the polling stations in a district formerly part of the erstwhile FATA and demands to revert the tribal districts to their previous status creates a perception of the involvement of the TTP in the affair. The network has vowed to fight against the inclusion of the tribal district into KP. The suicide attack in Bajaur’s Mamund tehsil, leaving two ANP workers dead and five others wounded, also carries the TTP’s footprint. That a mob protesting against the merger of tribal areas with KP attacked Federal Minster Shibli Faraz’s car makes it all the more important to find out if the TTP is involved and seek the extradition of the network from the safe havens of Afghanistan in case this turns to be true.
