By Ansar Mahmood Bhatti

Interesting aspects of Pakistan’s politics are unfurling as soon as the elections time is drawing near. The ruling PPP has said it will win at least 80 seats in the national assembly elections and will form the next government along with the coalition partners. PPP sources said together with the coalition partners MQM, Q and FATA members they will be able to get around 160 seats.

According PPP sources in Sindh PPP may win as many as 35 seats while in southern Punjab it may win 25, in rest of the Punjab 10, in KPK 5 and in Baluchistan 5. PPP believes MQM will win around 24-25 seat in Sindh and ultimately it will decide to join PPP in the coalition rather than Nawaz league.

Likewise ANP may also win around 10 seats in KPK province and around 5 seats in Baluchistan. PPP sources say FATA MNAs and around 30-35 independent will also join PPP in case it is asked to form the next government. Traditionally FATA and independent votes can be purchased by paying hefty amounts. Unfortunately FATA and independent MPs play crucial role in making or breaking the governments. Same will happen in the coming elections as well.

On the other hand PML N believes it will win around 80 seats in Punjab alone while in KPK, Balochistan and Sindh it will be able to grab few seats. Now it is in league with Muslim League functional therefore it is expected it may get some seat in Sindh as well. According to latest survey PML N is doing quite well and it has improved its position considerably.

Imran Khan has lost in the recent survey and its popularity graph has also come down but PTI people say graph came down mainly because they were busy in intra party elections, which is a fact of course. However the way PTI gragh came down nobody was expecting it to happen this way. Nevertheless Imran Khan is quite confident they will be able to recover and in coming days or when the next survey is conducted their position will be far better.

In Pakistan unfortunately elections are contested on the basis of electables and not on the basis of issues that is why non-traditional parties such as PTI do not stand bright chances of sweeping the elections. Of course in urban areas PTI will perform better but in rural areas old parties like PPP and PML N, or for that matter PML Q will grab more seats.

Now the question is what happens if the same parties again get majority and form the next government? Of course the-powers-that-be would never like this to happen because they are not satisfied with the way the PPP and its coalition partners have run the country. According to them the ruling clique provides with an exquisite example of bad governance that has driven the country towards chaos and misrule. Therefore analysts say, political impasse would become imminent if PPP led coalition is able to grab more seats.

All said and done, one thing is to be kept in mind that tempo of Pakistan’s politics cannot be gauged from the surveys and reports as is the case in the Western world where such surveys and exit polls have acquired so much importance and relevance. And most of the time surveys and exit polls prove correct. Interestingly this is not the case in Pakistan. Here nothing can be predicted or guessed with surety for politics here is so volatile that it keeps on changing directions with the each passing minute.

In a nutshell, political parties will have to spend a lot of money this time too to buy sympathies of the independent and FATA MPs, which is ostensibly a bad aspect of Pakistan’s politics but that is how things have been moving in this country.

The writer is Editor, DNA and Centreline journal. He can be reached at [email protected]