Javed Manj is raving and ranting against “corrupt and inefficient” politicians in front of a crowd of approximately 400 industrial workers and roadside vendors at Rohanwala village at the outskirts of Faisalabad city. His tirade against the traditional political elite appears tired to an outside observer but to the villagers listening to him his words sound exciting. After he finishes his speech, members of the audience come one by one to him to pledge that they will vote for change. “I have addressed more than 500 such corner meetings during the last two years,” Manj later tells the Herald.

People like Manj, who is a local leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), have developed a narrative immersed in the region’s political history and social realities. First and foremost, this narrative dwells on the insecurities of Faisalabad’s settler or migrant communities who came here in the first half of the twentieth century along with British-built irrigation canals. Manj says settlers/migrants, who form a majority of the population in the district, have an enduring sense of insecurity as most of them either have small agricultural landholdings or they do not own any land at all which makes them dependent on local industry, commerce and even bigger landowners to earn their livelihood. “These people are more easily attracted to the idea of change and revolution. In 1970s, [Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto won all the seats from this district because people were attracted to his slogan of change,” says Manj.

And then he puts Bhutto and PTI in a single sentence — something that many other political parties have tried in the past with varying degrees of success or failure. Manj recalls how Bhutto came to Faisalabad in early 1970s and how writer and activist Tariq Ali organised a rally, raising slogans in support of a revolution. “Bhutto said in response to the slogans that revolutions don’t happen every day; there was a revolution in 1947 and there was another one in 1970 and the third one will come after 40 years,” he says and adds that Imran Khan in 2013 represents the change that Bhutto had predicted four decades ago.

Manj believes the signs of change have already started to become visible in Faisalabad. “The July 24, 2011 rally by Imran Khan was the biggest in the history of this district,” he says. “Khan’s Dijkot rally on October 7, 2011 was even bigger than the one by Bhutto [in the same town],” he tells the Herald.

Even after discounting the element of exaggeration in Manj’s observations, the fact remains that PTI is emerging as a political force to reckon with in central Punjab, primarily because its cadres are making a serious effort to make its presence felt in the urban areas of the region. They are undoubtedly buoyed by the big public rallies that Khan has addressed in different towns and cities over the last two years or so. After PTI’s March 23 rally at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore, the party’s workers and activists are feeling a renewed level of confidence, leading them to stake their claim as being the biggest political force in the province. In another reflection of PTI’s renewed self belief is the party’s decision to field Khan as a candidate from one constituency each in Lahore and Rawalpindi — two cities in Punjab where electoral politics has long been dominated by Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN). With PTI making gains, it is unsurprising that people in most urban areas across central Punjab talk about PMLN versus PTI when they talk about tough electoral battles, rather than PMLN versus Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as the case used to be in the past. “There should be no doubt about this after the March 23 rally; it is now between us and the PMLN in Punjab,” says Manj.

In another indication of PPP’s waning fortunes in central Punjab, it is finding almost no allies from among the smaller parties in the region. Even the leaders and the workers of the Pakistan Muslim League–Quaid-e-Azam (PMLQ) – with which PPP is seeking to strike some seat adjustment deal in places such as Gujrat – see it as a foe rather than a friend. “We don’t interact with PPP workers even at the social level,” says Mian Imran Masood, a former provincial legislator and a PMLQ leader in Gujrat. Most small parties in the region either want to jump onto the PMLN bandwagon or see it as their only electoral rival. Masood, for instance, believes that the main battles in his district will be fought between his party and the PMLN.

Left to right: Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi; Imran Khan; Dr Tahirul Qadri

The shift away from PPP has become highly visible over the last three years with the rise of many, mainly right wing, political parties and groups such as PTI and Dr Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT). This has happened mostly at PPP’s expense. That the party has lost its status of being one of the two top contenders for power in Punjab is evident to almost all its political opponents. Azeem Randhawa, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief in Faisalabad, says there was a time when people used to say PPP would win if right-wing parties had two candidates in the same constituency. “This is no more the case,” he says, suggesting that the right-wing vote has increased so much that even when split within it will not result in an automatic advantage for PPP.

Some of the central Punjab parties and groups claim to be bigger than even the PMLN in their respective strongholds. This is exactly what PMLQ’s self-image is in the Gujrat district. Here, the family of Chaudhry Shujaat Husain and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi has succeeded in maintaining its status as a dominant political player, using its access to power as an effective tool to create and sustain an elaborate network of political patronage. Some PMLQ leaders feel no hesitation in admitting that their role as a coalition partner in the outgoing federal government has helped them to remain relevant in the electoral politics of Gujrat. “We have ministries, senate seats, development funds, jobs and other benefits,” says Masood, a close associate of the Chaudhry family. “People vote for us because they perceive us as [being able to] come to their help in times of trouble,” he says. During the two-and-a-half hours that Herald interviewed him in his public office in Gujrat, he was simultaneously addressing three different complaints by three different groups of people — one related to illegal occupation of land, another related to gas supply to a locality and the third about the admission of young boys and girls in a local college.

Some traditional right-wing parties, such as JI, also see the coming election as a chance to ensure their survival in the political field and, therefore, are making serious efforts to leave some mark on polling day. The party, according to Asha’ar Rehman, resident editor of daily Dawn in Lahore, “has lost its vote bank by allowing itself to be an appendage of the PMLN for far too long” but it is intent on keeping its fingers in the electoral pie by any means possible. Consequently, it is open to joining hands with any party except for PPP. While there are reports that JI is negotiating a seat adjustment formula with PTI, one of its central leader tells the Herald that his party will be making seat adjustments at the district level on a case-to-case basis. “It will not mean that if we have a seat adjustment in one constituency with one party, we will be bound to have the same arrangement with that party in any other constituency,” says Amirul Azeem, the JI spokesperson. “This means that we can have seat adjustments with more than one party.” Practically, this allows JI to have seat adjustment arrangements both with PMLN and PTI and that too in the same district.

Qadri’s PAT, after having proved its mettle in Lahore and Islamabad a few weeks ago, is now finding it difficult to repeat its performance in the electoral arena and its leaders say the party is not yet ready to take part in the polls. “Right now we are carrying out a membership campaign,” says Basharat Jaspal, who heads PAT in Punjab. He also points out that his party is not satisfied with the existing electoral system which is not conducive to bringing about change. “If we cannot bring change, I think, contesting elections will be meaningless,” he says. The other reason for the party’s indifference towards election is its electoral performance. So far it has only one election victory to its credit — Qadri winning a National Assembly seat from Lahore in 2002. In the absence of a strong presence in the poll calculus, PAT, however, has the capacity to swing a few thousand votes in many urban and semi-urban constituencies in central Punjab, usually in favour of some right-wing party. For instance, in Gujrat, says Masood of PMLQ, “PAT has supported us during the last two general elections.”

While it is difficult to predict which final combination will come about to determine the internal relationships between all these right-wing groups and parties in central Punjab and how they will cooperate or compete with PMLN or PTI, the situation throws up a definite conclusion: PPP loses its electoral sheen in the most thickly populated, most urbanised part of Pakistan — at least for the time being.