AN unusual thing happened in one of Sargodha’s five constituencies in the lead up to this election. The PML-N issued a ticket for a provincial seat to a Sharif relative, a usual enough occurrence.

But in this case the ticket went to someone who was not locally popular. Munir Qureshi was elected from this constituency in 2002 and was the runner-up in 2008. Yet, he appears to have no real performance record.

According to most people I spoke to, he has a ‘jaagirdarana zehniyat’ (feudal mentality) and has not delivered in return for votes. To top it off, he lives and works in Lahore, and is considered an outsider.

Opposing him was a local man, a member of one of the area’s largest biraderis. Bahadur Abbas Mekan ran for the first time in 2008, as an independent candidate, and despite receiving only 2,800 votes in that election, he built a reputation over the last five years as a “worker”.

He is seen as easily accessible and well connected. His family has been part of the local government system and two brothers are high-ranking bureaucrats, and he has used his contacts in the state to deliver. This had evidently swung support strongly in his favour within the constituency.

Encouraged by this, he approached the PML-N for a ticket, only to be refused in favour of the relative, despite the fact that Qureshi had contested the previous two elections on a PML-Q ticket.

Mekan decided to go ahead anyway and contested again as an independent. He began a campaign that brought together various biraderis in the district in an alliance that soon made him a stronger contender than the ex-MPA.

Ten days before the election Hamza Sharif stopped by the constituency for an election rally. According to my local sources, PML-N’s youth wing apparently reported to Hamza that they were bound to lose this seat because of the party’s decision to go with their relative.

Hamza’s rally was also boycotted by the large Mekan biraderi. A few days later the party issued a statement “opening” the seat. This meant that the party was no longer backing its own candidate, nor opposing Mekan (who, rumour had it, was invited to join the PML-N in case of a win).

Local will, it seemed, had prevailed over what we popularly call the ‘jaagirdarana nizam’. Different biraderis of the constituency had come together against a veteran, landed politician who had, by many accounts, provided little and remained inaccessible to his voters. Instead, a man with far less experience but said to have the will to deliver was, judging by the sizable resistance he managed to mount to the old guard, set to win.

Beyond this, however, something more has changed. Mekan was only one of many new candidates on almost all provincial seats in this district.

In the three provincial constituencies where I spent some time in the run-up to the election, the average number of candidates in 2002 was 5.3, in 2008 it was 4.6, and this time it was a whopping 15.6. Many of these candidates had never run before, or if they have, it was as nazims in the now defunct local government system.

The explosion of candidates for MPA seats has heralded a number of visible changes. While the competition for MNA seats was still being managed by local bigwigs, that for MPA seats was far more open this time around.

People appeared to be choosing and aligning more freely. Almost everywhere we found that while an entire village was voting for a single candidate for the MNA seat, or at the most two candidates, at the provincial level the village was divided into multiple small groups that were aligned to different candidates.

More importantly, these groups usually had direct contact with these candidates, who were all out and about the countryside, conducting small meetings in every village. Door-to-door campaigns are still rare, but such face-to-face contact between rural voters and candidates was also a rarity until the 2008 elections.

Direct contact between voters and candidates has even greater significance in the post-18th Amendment environment, in which almost all ministries related to the delivery of public services have been devolved to the provinces.

This means that voters are connecting directly not only with their representatives, but also with those who will have a direct say in the delivery of most rural services. The increased competitiveness on these seats means greater choice for the voter, and consequently, a greater ability to hold candidates directly accountable for their delivery records.

It also means a larger space for new politicians. If this trend crystallises, it could mean the injection of many new politicians within existing parties, as exemplified by the story above. Initially, this will probably include people with connections in the state, and large biraderis to draw upon.

Slowly, however, it may start to draw in non-dynastic, unconnected first-timers. If the new government now brings back the system of local government — the usual route for the emergence of newer, less wealthy candidates — we may see the emergence of a dynamic, vibrant political scene that could work to marginalise the landed elite from politics without the need for structural reforms.

Jason Burke quoted a landlord politician in the Guardian (May 5) as saying, “Politics has become such a dirty game. It’s getting so hard”. The man seems to be referring to exactly this trend. That, for the rest of us, is very good news.

The writer is a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.