Pakistanis go to the polls with resignation: the final campaign message is ‘go, go, go’

Noon has barely arrived when the doors of a classroom set up as a polling station appear to be closed. The officials who have to manage the polls here in Saidpur, a suburb of the Pakistani capital Islamabad, shrug their shoulders. The chairman of the polling station took a break for lunch, it was said. “It was for prayer,” corrects the chairman in question, Saadr Bashir Khoreshi, who rushes over. That is not the intention: on election day in Pakistan, Thursday, the opportunity to cast a vote should not be interrupted for a minute.

The weather is beautiful this day, people are free because of the elections. The queue in front of the school building where the women’s ballot boxes are located is growing steadily. Before voters arrive at the polling station, they must collect their voting card – from the political parties, which have registered the citizens entitled to vote in advance. Representatives have set up stalls and tables on the street corners of the constituencies, with flags in party colors above them. Formally, it does not matter which party issues the pass – a slip of paper with name and information – as the choice is only really made at the polling station.

43-year-old Ambreen Kanwal prefers not to say who she voted for. But she does want to say what she hopes that candidate will do: “A government leader must look at the state of the country and live in the now.” She looks around, at the bare walls of the school building and the water filter installation that is out of use. “Whoever is in power now must provide solutions now, and not just worry about whether he will have power again in the future.”

Mighty army

Pakistanis who went to vote on Thursday did so knowing that the result has already been determined: former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is the favorite of the powerful army, and will probably be elected for the fourth time. Speculation continues about Sharif’s margin of victory, his eventual governing coalition and the composition of parliament. With regard to the latter, turnout in particular could make a difference, Pakistani analysts have said in recent days.

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A high turnout would benefit the party of Sharif’s archrival, the deposed and convicted former Prime Minister Imran Khan. His PTI party has been extensively dismantled since his ouster as prime minister in 2022. Party members were arrested, and the PTI was no longer allowed on the ballot as a single organization. Supporters of the popular Khan had to vote for ‘independent’ candidates on Thursday. To help them make the right choice for a PTI-loyal candidate, the party built a special website: enter your constituency, and the symbols of the recommended candidates will appear on your screen. “We have to take our voters into account – illiteracy is high in Pakistan,” PTI spokesman and campaign manager Raoof Hasan told reporters at the party’s central secretariat in Islamabad on Wednesday evening.

Instead of a campaign on the streets, where members of Imran Khan’s party PTI could be arrested, they conducted a large-scale online campaign

That is why there is an army of volunteers on the top floor of the secretariat, ready to answer questions. Huge posters of the 2018 elections, with Imran Khan in full regalia, hang in every corner of the room. The activity on that floor contrasts sharply with the silence that reigned at the party secretariat on the eve of the elections: no enthusiastic crowd, no waving flags.

Instead of a campaign on the streets – where members would be vulnerable or could be arrested – PTI conducted a large-scale online campaign. That seems like a logical step: of all political leaders, former cricketer Khan has by far the most followers on social media. On election day it should become clear how much the messages had succeeded in “really mobilizing” those younger voters, Hasan said, before he descended the stairs from the telephone exchange to a small studio elsewhere in the building. “Tomorrow’s last video is simple. Go, go, go.”

Internet and telephone closed

The question remains how many people received that message via social media on Thursday. Almost immediately after the polling stations opened, the internet and telephone connections were shut down in large parts of the country. That was against the promise that the Ministry of Information had previously made to journalists.

Pakistani authorities said the blackout was a necessary security measure after at least 30 people were killed in attacks on the campaign offices of independent candidates in the southwestern province of Balushistan on Wednesday. The double attack marked the end of a bloody run-up to the elections. Last week a candidate was shot dead in the northwest of the country; Party premises, meetings and official election bodies were targeted in previous attacks.

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Such an accumulation of obstacles – limited candidates, the ubiquitous resigned acceptance that the most important result has already been determined, fear of the way to the polling station – could deprive people of the desire to vote altogether, analysts suggested in advance. In the capital Islamabad, voters showed no fear about going to the polling station on Thursday afternoon. And many of them dared to say it out loud if they wanted to vote for Imran Khan.

At the polling station in sector G-9, a neighborhood in Islamabad with low-paid civil servants and workers, it feels “like Eid” on election day. [Suikerfeest], or another national holiday,” shouts a young man passing by, his voting card in hand, collected from a tent where the PTI flag is flying. That’s where it’s busiest. “Elections should be an important part of our country. I want my choice to be recorded somewhere. What the result then shows is another matter.”

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