I have read many articles on the conduct of 2018 elections from both the Pakistani and international press including reports from various monitoring organisations. I have also watched many news shows and clips and have also watched or read first person anecdotes on social and regular media. I had done something similar in 2013.
My personal opinion is that in 2013 rigging was sporadic and done at the local level through ghunda gardi by local influentials. The only exception was Karachi where MQM indulged in systematic booth capturing and boosted its vote count. However, MQM would have won most of its seats anyway. My opinion is that the overall result was affected by around 10 seats or so. The judicial commission that investigated the rigging reached similar conclusions.
In 2018 my personal opinion is that rigging was centrally organized by the army and systematically executed on 50+ seats to give PTI a pre-planned number of seats. The method of rigging was to expel the polling agents during counting and take over the counting and reporting process in 50+ (not all) constituencies. The polling staff was intimidated by the aggressive security staff. ECP and caretaker governments, if not complicit, were too weak and mostly stood aside. In my opinion the overall result was affected by 50+ seats.
I am not even talking here about pre-poll pressures applied to various parties and the media.
Overall, I think this election was similar to the 2002 election where similar tactics were used to bring PML-Q to power.
The only difference is that Imran Khan didn’t get his pajama in a knot for opening constituencies. Did you remember that PML-n was acting like a saas in a saas bahu drama for allowing even 4 constituencies to be recounted?
Same is situation with MQM, the myth of ‘MQM would’ve done majority’ is nothing but hoax. Many of my immediate relatives who were hard-core MQM supporters in 2013 and even until last 2 years gave up on MQM as they did sh!t for Karachi in all their tenures except the Mushy time. MQM was a mafia which was finally broken when Altaf Hussain was sidelined. In 2013 PTI couldn’t do proper campaign as their camps were ransacked, workers harassed etc. but this time they were not able to do that. Lyari showed major change against PPP by throwing stones at Bilawal. I am glad people are waking up politically, I hope they take PTI to cleaners if they are not able to perform in next 5 years.
Why is it such a big surprise for you? There was an obvious shift in public attitudes this time around. People questioned their representatives…and gave hereditary politics a big kick in the butt this time around. Its a wake up call for Bilawal. His ancestory is not enough to get him seats anymore. Its sort of like Bakhtawar and asifa getting kicked off wikipedia for not being notable on their own.
Where is the ‘Khalai Makhlooq’ when you need it. Why aren’t they reading this forum. A certain someone NEEDS to disappear…PRONTO!!! Please make it happen.
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