GUJRAT: The candidates belonging to the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) have mainly been relying on the social media and telephone calls to run their election campaigns due to ‘on-ground hardships’ allegedly created by the state institutions for them so far.

In some constituencies, the party could not even finalise its backed candidates due to the hectic litigation related to the acceptance of nomination papers as well as issuance of election symbols.

A number of PTI candidates from Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin and Wazirabad are avoiding public appearances in fear of being arrested in different cases already lodged in various police stations.

Though the PTI has announced tickets for Rehana Abbas and her daughter Zahra Ikhlas in NA-64 (Gujrat-Kunjah) and PP-32 Kunjah, their election campaign has not been launched even on social media yet as the party leadership is still trying to clear the way for Chaudhry Parvez Elahi and his wife Qaisara Elahi to contest from both these seats.

Fear of arrest keeps candidates away from public appearance

Similarly, Mudassar Raza, a PTI candidate from PP-31 Gujrat city, is never seen in the public and the police have already raided his office, arrested and booked 17 of his workers who had to get bail from the court.

Sources say that the PTI candidate from NA-63 (Jalalpur Jattan-Tanda), Sajid Yousaf Channi, is still abroad and his campaign is being launched through social media.

Another NA candidate from NA-66 and PP-36 Wazirabad, Muhammad Ahmed Chatha, has been in hiding as he was nominated in the May 9 case lodged in Gujranwala.

Another candidate, Tanveer Gondal from PP-30 (Jalalpur Jattan) who is purely relying on phone calls and social media advertisements, has been in hiding for the last few weeks and sources close to him say that he has escaped many police attempts to arrest him.

The PTI-backed candidates are not willing to even talk on record.

A party candidate told Dawn, on condition of anonymity, that he would often use the public transport instead of his own car to avoid any difficulty.

At least three PTI candidates, including Chaudhry Ilyas NA-62 (Sara-i-Alamgir-Kharian-Kotla), Syed Wajahat Husnain Shah NA-65 (Lalamusa-Dinga) and Noman Ashraf PP-27 (Sara-i-Alamgir) have managed to get the election symbols on the orders of the higher courts during the last couple of days.

“Despite all these hardships, the PTI aspirants are still in the race with different election symbols,” a local party worker said that added that the party had devised a strategy for its candidates to mainly rely on social media campaigns to reach out to their voters and that course of action might last for another week and so after which the strategy could be changed according to the conditions.

Some experts think that use of social media for election campaign does not look to be a bad strategy by the PTI and it was the social media which had given the boost to the party after its ‘re-launch’ in 2011 when Imran Khan started looking threatening to the PML-N and PPP after his famous public meeting at Minar-i-Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2024