How ironic it is that a Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-backed candidate who owes his success to party founder Imran Khan and Imran Khan alone has joined Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) immediately after the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) notified his victory.
Isn’t it the betrayal of trust that the voters in Lahore’s National Assembly constituency (NA-121) had entrusted in him on the call of the party which had been deprived of its iconic electoral symbols almost on the eve of general election, leaving it with no other choice to ask its candidates to contest elections as ‘independent’ ones but under the full support and blessings of the party and its leadership? The strategy that the PML-N has employed to net as many as or a big shoal of independent or PTI-backed candidates is fraught with adverse consequences for democracy and its future in the country mainly because of the fact that PML-N has not emerged, unlike the informal group comprising independent candidates, as a clear winner or victor in the elections.
Delivering a victory speech in the middle of the vote count by PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif was a desperate attempt aimed at wooing the PTI-backed candidates who had returned successful. Little did this veteran politician, however, know that his so-called appeal of taking the country out of the woods through some joint efforts was essentially bait to lure the PTI-backed candidates to add to the tally of his elected MNAs. It is a fact that country’s politics heated up after the three-time former prime minister returned to the country last year from a four-year self-imposed exile. But he must admit that he miserably failed to successfully persuade people to give him a ‘two-third majority’. No doubt, Nawaz Sharif is a man of great courage and political shrewdness. He, in my view, is required to give PTI a chance to muster enough numbers that are needed to form a government at Centre. Should Imran Khan’s party fail to reach the ‘magic number’ Nawaz Sharif must feel free to take every lawful or not-so-lawful step that could catapult his party to power yet again.
Abu Adnan (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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