Legislators in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) reached consensus over the appointment of a caretaker Chief Minister for the province on Friday, thus taking the lead over other provinces and the Federal Government in transitioning towards the General Elections 2013.
Now that the provincial helm is being handed over to former Chief Justice Peshawar High Court, Justice Tariq Pervez(R); political parties in the province can turn their attentions to the upcoming polls. Out of 272 National Assembly seats that are up for grabs in the upcoming General Elections, 35 will be contested over in this province.
A recap of the results of the 2008 General Elections for the same seats and a look at what has transpired in the political field of the province since then, is thus in order.
In the previous General Elections, Awami National Party (ANP) and Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) bagged ten seats each. The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) won five seats each. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidates emerged victorious in three constituencies while the remaining two seats were won by Engineer Usman Khan Tarkai, who contested independently and Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao who contested under the banner of his own, QWP.
All five MNAs that won elections here on PML-Q tickets have since deserted the party. Ameer Muqam, who had been that party’s provincial president, defected to PML-N late last year. Around the same time, Shahzada Mohiuddin joined the Awami Muslim League. In the upcoming polls, Mohiuddin will likely step aside so that former President Pervez Musharraf may contest the elections from this constituency.
Humayun Saifullah was the latest to leave the PML-Q while Muhammad Nawaz Khan Alai recently told media representatives that he is deliberating over which party to join and will announce a decision shortly. Given this exodus of MNAs, the PML-Q will probably be history in the province after the upcoming polls.
The ANP has also suffered significant setbacks in the province, as a number of MPAs and party activists have recently defected. The JUI-F has been the major beneficiary from this trend, as a number of provincial legislators from ANP have joined its ranks. PML-N has also announced it will collude with Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s party. Together the two parties represent the emerging top contenders in the province.
The PPPP and ANP will likely collude in a bid to safeguard their hold over 20 NA seats here. While their joint effort is likely to secure seats in Malakand, Upper and Lower Dir; other constituencies may be harder to predict. For instance, Kohistan and Swat-II, both constituencies where PPPP emerged victorious saw less than 20 percent voter turnout. If a larger proportion of the public turn up at the polls, these seats may be considered wild cards. The ANP-held Swat-I constituency presents a similar situation.
The largely untested Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has shown strength in the province through some large congregations, the most recent and biggest of which took place in Peshawar, on 10 March. Imran Khan is expected to contest polls from Peshawar. If that party is able to upset the incumbents from ANP and PPPP that hold constituencies in and around the provincial capital, the political landscape of the province could emerge quite different in the aftermath of the next elections.
The political landscape in the province is open for new challengers for two basic reasons. In some constituencies where the incumbents have been threatened by large public gatherings and defections to emerging parties; the voter turnout was previously low, so a higher turnout can be a game changer.
In areas where the turnout was stronger; the incumbents have seen an exodus of ‘electables’, who may take a chunk of voters with them.
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