Rural vote in Pakistan is determined at biradri level (arain, khokar, Rajput, Malik, Chaudhary, Talpur, Mengal, bugti, Kasuri, Afridi, Soomro, Niazi etc.). The essence of it is internal wheeling and dealing and patronage (‘what you can do for me’), where party affiliations perhaps don’t matter that much.
The elections will not be determined by who does how many jalsas in a day. Why do you think PPP is not doing any jalsas? Have they accepted defeat or do they not have the means to arrange for someone to stand in front of a big stage? It’s because they know it doesn’t really matter. Their biradri vote is safe as those people rarely vote on the basis of performance at national level. Unlike city folk, rural people do not have the time, luxury or understanding to think about party ideologies, past governance records, hero-worshipping, ‘what is good for the country in the long-term’ etc. They vote based on their most immediate and urgent needs (tractor, water pump, local ‘taat’ school etc.).
One must not underestimate the significance of BISP (Benazir income support program) for PPP for instance. And I am sure some PML-N candidates have done good things at local level atleast, gotten people jobs, built roads or bridges etc. So it is not all loot and plunder.
Likewise it will eventually come down to whether PTI’s grass roots campaigners or ‘tabdeeli razakar’ (as they are called) can succeed in breaking the traditional biradri shackles and convincing rural voters to vote for PTI
These tall claims of thinking about the country first and voting for "clean & honest " people becomes a joke when you live in a poverty-stricken rural area, where you don’t have access to basic amenities like clean water, electricity, gas, schools etc. When the only thing that matters to you is knowing that someone at the top will listen to you in your time of need and will hopefully try to get you those facilities. Whether that person is the right person for the country or a crook or an angootha chaap like Raja Riaz etc. or whether the party he represents is corrupt & rotten to the core becomes an afterthought
It is unfortunate that in desi parliamentary democracy, illiterates (who vote along biradri or feudal lines) hijack or spoil the vote of the literates who vote with their brains. Same applies to India but to a lesser extent
but one could equally argue that the biradri approach is practical or pragmatic (atleast) as they vote on the basis of their most basic immediate needs. (Yazdi’s PTI v PML-N example) This probably makes villagers more intelligent than city folk when it comes to voting!