It was perhaps too soon to expect any change in public opinion, and there were no surprises in any of the by-election results. All the parties retained the seats they had won in the general elections. This inability to change any results indicates that the original ticket awards were made properly. Most of the seats at stake in the Punjab were those vacated by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Punjab CM Maryam Nawaz after they chose their respective seats The seats had overwhelmingly been vacated by the PML(N), with its allies, the PPP, the Istehkam Pakistan Party and the PPP vacating one seat each. Thus retaining the seats could be good news for the government, but not much. After all, the electorate has not budged. True, as the general election is not even three months in the past, it should not have been expected to budge, but it also means that the results of that election, in which the PTI-backed independents emerged as the largest group in the House, but also managed to install the KP Chief Minister, still hold good. One of the signs that things are not calming down, that tempers are still raised, is that there were several clashes between the PML(N) and the PTI, most notably in Punjab’s Narowal district, where a PML(N) worker in PP-58 was killed. Though most of the Punjab contests were PML(N) versus PTI, the by-election in Rahim Yar Khan saw the PPP candidate beat the PML(N)’s.
That it was a PML(N) worker that was killed did not stop the PTI from claiming that the by-elections were rigged. There were claims of ballot stuffing in Gujrat district, where the PML(Q) retained a seat against former CM Ch Pervez Elahi. The rigging claim had to be made to substantiate the PTI’s claim that it was robbed of 60 or 70 seats in the general election. As a matter of fact, most of the seats in the by-election were claimed by the PTI to have been stolen from it. Though there are question marks over the by-elections, the rigging claims seem to be pro forma. They do not explain how the PTI was allowed to retain the seat it gave up.
However, the PTI gave enough weight to the claims that it called for a protest on Friday. That indicates that it will leave no opportunity of protest, which is perhaps how an opposition must behave, but does not bode well for the political stability elections were supposed to bring.
