Election 2013 and the Failure of Political Analysts
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
So, we have the election results in our hands now. Is there any surprise in them? Well, it depends. Good news is that we can now finally talk about the voting pattern of Pakistanis in 2013 with some objectivity. Bad news? I am sure for some analysts the results are shocking. For almost two years, after the rally of October 2011, they spent a lot of time convincing ordinary people that the change has come to their doorsteps. All they had to do was to let it come in and as soon as they have embraced the change, there will be bliss, an eternal feeling of contentment and happiness. All their suffering would be gone and their agony would be taken care of in 19 days! But, the bitter reality for them is: all their claims about the wave that was supposed to have swept away the old pyramids did not hold grounds. And their cherry-picked predictions, guilefully suffixed and prefaced with a verse from the Holy Qur’an or the Hadith, have turned out to be untrue.
Ordinarily, one would assume they are disappointed in their inability to feel the pulse of the people and to confuse them on television by exaggerating the public appeal of their favorite political party. Yet, the fact is a little disturbing: they are only dismayed with the outcome of the elections and are not at all ashamed of their lack of professionalism. Before we move forward, first we must admit thatthe mandate of the people is clear, not nearly as divided as it was in 2008, and is focused mostly on the revival of economy and to get rid of the energy crisis of the country. For that purpose, they have expressed their confidence in the leadership of Mian Nawaz Sharif to lead them for the next five years. We, therefore, congratulate him on his victory to be able to connect with the people once more and wish him the best of luck.
Coming back, if you had watched the talk shows on television for a few days before the elections, you would have found experts on all channels, discussing for hours, constituency by constituency, about the voting tendencies of the people. It was not difficult to get the impression within a few hours in those days, that the popularity of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had been rising, its campaign was gaining momentum and flocks of people were attracted to its ideology. Khan is holding more than five rallies each day, and each one of them is larger than the previous one. The younger generation is all fired up. They are going to rebel big time from their traditional clan based voting preferences; they are eager to take charge and almost all of them are going to vote for the PTI. The only chance that the current ‘status quo’ has left to survive is a low turnout in the elections, which was unlikely and would be unfortunate for the country.
There was almost a unanimity in this rhetoric and anyone, especially Mr Shafi Gillani of Gallup Pakistan who brought up a voice of dissent, was ripped apart and was blamed for his political affiliations. His observations from his large study were brushed aside as biased and unrealistic. Many times, these accusations from the analysts would cross every limit of decency and they would blatantly call him names or label him as a paid agent of Sharif. (Since anyone who supports Sharif has to be a paid agent and whoever supports PTI is a patriot). The polls, as small as they were, that showed a neck-and-neck fight between the two parties were considered authentic and matched with the realities on ground. All the reports of the international news agencies, from The Washington Post to The Guardian and from Financial Times to The Economist, who consistently predicted victory for MNS, were disregarded as conspiracy theories of Western powers. The reputation of the newspapers as large independent professional organizations, their honesty and their dedication to their job, all of them were belittled and ridiculed as being a part of bigger plot against Pakistanis.
Now, the true verdict of the people is out. Although, the hard numbers are awaited, we still have a close idea about how would they look like. Based on that information, we can comfortably say the analysts were wrong on most accounts. A neck –and-neck fight has yielded almost a simple majority to Sharif; his close second — PTI or Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) — is almost three times less in number from his National Assembly seats. Put another way, both the PTI and PPP combined has far less number of seats than the representation of the PML-N in the National Assembly alone. In Punjab, the PTI was able to get only 20 seats while the PML-N scored a double century, which can put any neutral observer to shame, who had once called it to be a close competition. According to a newspaper report, 37 percent of the youth voted in favor of Sharifs while 24 percent favored the PTI. And even though, the turnout was around 60 percent, the tsunami could still not be seen anywhere beyond the affluent neighborhoods of some large metropolitan cities: Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.
There was only one area where the analysts were not wrong, and Gallup Pakistan had already informed us about it without psychic insight: it was the colossal failure of the PPP to connect with the people and to even emerge at least as a formidable opposition in Punjab. I guess, from all these numbers, we can comfortably say our experts are not really experts and our analysts have a long way to go before they can honestly be called as one. It would require a serious soul searching for them and a great deal of research, reading and objectivity, which they are currently missing.
(The writer is a freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
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