LAHORE is going to have two important National Assembly by-elections — along with by-polls on two seats of the Punjab Assembly — in a week or so. The election in the city should have generated quite a lot of activity and excitement. It hasn’t. Instead, there is a collection of the unusual in Lahore in the run-up to Oct 14, voting day, which has to be acknowledged.

The most unusual occurrence for someone placing emphasis on dignified politicking is the presence of Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as the PML-N candidate from one of the National Assembly contests.

The seat is up for grabs after the PML-N decided that Punjab was important enough for the party to have Hamza Shahbaz watch over the Sharif interests here. Resultantly, Hamza retained the Punjab Assembly seat that he had won and gave up the national seat where he had emerged as a runaway winner. There were many aspirants for the ticket from this, NA-124, constituency but eventually it was revealed that the N-League’s top leadership had prevailed upon Shahid Khaqan to compete for the honours.

The area is considered a PML-N bastion. Hamza, a modern legend in his own right when it comes to building candidature for popular approval, has worked here for a long time. So much so that both in the 2013 and 2018 elections, the PTI watched helplessly as the second-generation Sharif walked over his meek opponents. The PTI candidate for the coming by-poll does seem to have some inkling of the importance of publicising his campaign, yet the PML-N appears to be well ahead in a fight that is still to reach its crescendo.

The PTI is as yet not quite the party likely to upstage Hamza’s nominee in NA-124.

The PTI is as yet not quite the party likely to upstage Hamza’s nominee in NA-124. The PML-N is well ahead and well poised here, bar a last-minute, miraculous turnaround brought about by some unforeseen Imran Khan master stroke. Why is it then that somebody in the city still has the cheek to question the logic behind the former prime minister offering himself for easy experiment in NA-124 Lahore?

For one, it is tough to separate Shahid Khaqan Abbasi from his old and customary Murree environment. He did not lose by a bad enough margin for him to go hunting for a new constituency and submit to such direct patronage from the Sharifs as he has done now for winning a right to sit in the Assembly. It is indeed true that Shahid Khaqan had carried out his duties as prime minster after the ouster of Mian Nawaz Sharif, showing his mentor the respect and reverence that is due from a true follower. But this was recent. The gentleman had established himself, albeit at the back of a little dynasty of his own, before he swore allegiance to the rising Sharifs of Lahore.

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi won his first election to the National Assembly, in 1988, as an independent from a Rawalpindi (Murree) constituency. It was Raja Zafarul Haq, already a veteran, who carried the Sharif label that election, but Raja Sahib lost, just as he had lost to Shahid Khaqan’s father, Khaqan Abbasi, in the 1985 ‘non-party’ polls.

The point here is that Shahid Khaqan had in a way already proven his own potential before he became a part of a party that over time turned into more and more of a Sharif show with little room for others — unless a contingency necessitated a search for a stop-gap prime minister. Not everyone will be pleased by the eventual submitting of individual talent to the Sharif supremacy manifest in Shahid Khaqan’s — imposed? — quest for a passage to the National Assembly through Hamza’s Lahore. The respected politician from Murree could very easily have opted for some important assignment in the party commensurate with a reputation that has been lent some more polish as Nawaz Sharif’s replacement in Prime Minister House. He could have waited for a return ticket in his own name, from his own area, with the tag of a party he has been working with for the last 30 years.

If this is an easy PML-N seat, then anyone can win it. You don’t quite need to expose a former prime minister, knowing that a new tough-talking government would be there licking its lips at having such an early go at a rival party stalwart. The PTI is in power in Islamabad and apparently, very mindful of the fact. It is the PTI which is very much in charge in Lahore. But unless it has some secret plan to upstage PML-N domination in the city, the PTI doesn’t exactly seem to be poised for a Sharif rout on the 14th of this month.

The rule of an easy election win is that a victory must appear to have been achieved before the numbers come in on election day. The PTI needs to ask whether it could have done better than the candidate it has put up against the PML-N in NA-124. It is very unusual for a ruling party, with governments in both Lahore and Islamabad, to allow an impression that it is half-heartedly contesting a by-election so soon after coming to power.

In the past, parties in a similar situation would apply a particular formula. Quite often someone resourceful having joined the party recently would be asked to go into a tough contest, such as the one the PTI faces in Hamza’s territory. Like perhaps a Humayun Akhtar pleading for a PTI ticket being asked to prove his worth — and that of the resources at his disposal — by taking on old PML-N colleague Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in a contest not fancied by too many big names around the PTI.

It would have been an extremely difficult challenge, but one that, according to local wisdom, amounted to the cleansing deep dip in the water that the newcomers from other herds and stables are required to take. In the event, Humayun Akhtar found himself a tough opponent to fight in Saad Rafiq in NA-131, another seat where polls are being held on Oct 14. He also earned flak from PTI supporters who thought there were others more capable and deserving candidates to represent them in this area.

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2018