Daily Times

The roaring PML(N) is far too occupied in painting the town red after it sailed through NA-133 by-election on Sunday to notice that all is not well under its nose. Mrs Shaista Malik won back the seat that had fallen vacant after her husband passed away. Good for her, but comparing her meagre 47,000 votes to the whopping 90,000 grabbed in the 2018 general elections dramatically dampens her party’s performance card no matter how loud the firecrackers may be. Bringing home the bacon, definitely, loses its appeal when you are fighting out of your own citadel.

Overwhelmingly surprising, however, has been the Jiyalas’ score. Starting from 5,500 votes three years earlier, the same Chaudhry Aslam Gill put up an extremely strong fight against his rival; bagging 32,000 votes. If this does not speak of the blowing of the winds of change, what on God’s green earth would? While the title went the other way, the PPP camp carried the day as far as the opening lines of its second act was concerned. Spearheaded by the former president Asif Ali Zardari’s passionate presence in the Lahore camp, the entire party was invested in the election to revive the lost glory. The last three years have not seen them attract a decent vote back anywhere across Punjab. Wherever the by-poll arena was set up, frenzy reigned supreme as the two archrivals locked horns.

Nevertheless, this time, the senior PPP leaders were significantly helped in finishing in front by the silly mistakes of the ruling PTI. That a slight error in the candidacy papers of not one but two candidates from the party earned them expulsion on technical grounds speaks of the muddied waters loud and clear. The rumour mills are also churning murmurs of dissent within the ranks where the top leadership refused seasoned officeholder Ejaz Chaudhry for the new blue-eyed boy. Does busying oneself with fiddle-faddle befit a party that has eyes on the hot seat? It would not be wrong to link the PTI’s weak grip over its local leadership with an out-of-the-blue dynamism in the PPP’s campaign. Where one appears conveniently perched atop its cushy throne, the other wants a great show of reclaiming its lands. Whether Mr Cheema broke out in a sweat and chose the filing of his papers as an easy escape or he was so incompetent that he could not fulfil the basic requirements of his race, only time would tell. But petrified or unfit, the captain better take stock of his sailors. *