MUHAMMAD Abid has the ear of dozens of his potential voters each day. Their heads bowed, the number of his listeners has certainly increased ever since he left Okara and settled in Lahore more than two decades ago.

Abid (name changed to protect privacy) chose for establishing his business a housing society that was in the making. His business has grown over time and today his is one of the two shops in the society working under the rather grand title of ‘Men’s Salon’. The difference between him and many others is that he has got the spelling of ‘salon’ right and that he has political ambition — not just ambition to see change, but actually a desire to help bring it about at the grass roots.

There are no marks for guessing which side Abid was on in the last general election: firmly in Kaptaan’s team. He says he has always been a supporter, having joined the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf much before the entry into PTI of many of its current stalwarts. And above his constant whispered hum that he has perfected over long years of speaking into eardrums, traces of bitterness creep into his voice as he relates his story.

Muhammad Abid had high hopes of getting a nomination from the PTI for the seat of a general councillor in local government elections. He even found a contact to one of the very clean-looking PTI candidates in the last general election to plead his case. He did not get the ticket. The party, by then, had been taken over by ‘lateral entrants’.

Unfortunately for Abid, his didn’t turn out to be a case where his party could be seen to have put its faith in the common man. He wasn’t the man whose example was to be flaunted in media as a sign of tabdeeli or transformation.

The selectors, he says, favoured another gentleman. “The man they preferred over me had an even bigger sifarish than I had.”

Being spurned, Abid says, he can live with. But it is the insult that has come with injury that he now chooses to put in public view. This is the continuation of the politics of the underdog that he has been practising as an activist, only his focus has shifted from inter-party to intra-party.

He took his case to two men heading the local board for award of tickets — both with political origins in the period and stables of Gen Musharraf. He was denied and he says he knows why. “One of them explained I couldn’t get it since I was a hairdresser,” Abid utters the expected line making the bowed heads inside his salon jerk.

His clients are suddenly overcome by a desire to exchange glances. Some sympathetic words are spoken, a little anger is expressed but overall the mood inside the salon is not sufficiently lifted. This is a lost battle, already, considering the parties in the fray and the more respectable nominees the parties have been wise enough to put forward.

Muhammad Abid’s own PTI has fielded a chirpy, energetic young man who is so good at convincing people and who looks ever so positive that he earns his bread by selling life insurance policies with a smile playing on his lips always.

The man is certainly not your average in-charge of local affairs from the past. He looks fresh and sprightly, and keen to find his vocation in politics, but Abid says he has the added advantage of being related by blood to someone who in turn is linked by work to a not-too-distant nazim of Lahore.

The PTI youth’s real rival in the election — when it is held — would be a gentleman enjoying an all too familiar surname and the backing of the super powerful PML-N. He is on the right side of youth, a son of a well-known journalist who many in the local street say could have bid for an office higher than that of a general councillor.

Against these more resourceful candidates and without party nomination, Abid doesn’t appear to be too ‘serious’ a contender in the polls — should they be held and should he decide to take part in them. He is uncertain about the staging of the polls anytime soon in the wake of the court case about the delimitations of local government constituencies.

He readily accepts the reality that his chance was with the new party and the new local government constituencies about half the size of the old ones.

To Muhammad Abid’s mind, the big and widespread PML-N had a lot many groups and individuals to accommodate. And the rise in the number of constituencies because of the reduction in the size of a unit provided them with an opportunity to adjust and reward.

Conversely, these smaller constituencies were deemed easier to handle by those with limited resources and limited areas of influence and popularity. That’s where he saw his chance.

Time is also proving to be a dampener. A few weeks ago, he was much more upbeat about it even though he had already been denied the PTI ticket. A flash election that once looked imminent due to the court’s intervention best suited him, and many other ‘common men’ who had similar claims on enjoying some local support but who lacked the strength to hang on to this support for a prolonged period.

Muhammad Abid is thinking about dropping out of the race he had been grooming himself for. Beyond those prepared to occasionally lend him an ear he doesn’t have the means to sustain it.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.