As Pakistan stands poised on the brink of a general election, the guessing game is on in full earnest to predict who will win this time. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan is once again exuding the airs of a victor, as he did before the 2013 election. His party did not win although it did better than some analysts had predicted (and formed a coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with help from the Jamaat-e-Islami).

The 2013 poll outcome, however, proved that the party suffered from unrealistic expectations, given its limited support (especially in Punjab) at the constituency level, lack of an effective party machine to run the election campaign and deliver the votes on polling day, and the dearth of so-called ‘electables’ among its candidates. The latter are traditional politicians embedded in their rural constituencies on the basis of hereditary feudal and tribal allegiances and a patronage culture.

Imran Khan’s campaign of allegations of rigging after the 2013 election (which escalated from an initial rejection of the results of just four seats to calling the entire election rigged) via approaches to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the demand for a judicial commission to the months-long sit-in, weakened the Nawaz Sharif-led government but failed to dislodge it. The ECP rejected Imran Khan’s appeal against the results of the four seats in question. The judicial commission, headed by none other than the then chief justice of Pakistan and current caretaker Prime Minister Justice Nasirul Mulk, could not find any systematic rigging but only flaws in the conduct of the polls, and the sit-in finally withered on the vine waiting for the third umpire’s raised finger.

PTI found solace in the troubles that overtook Nawaz Sharif after the Panama Papers revelations that finally ended up in his ouster as prime minister, his disqualification for life from being elected to Parliament and the initiation of accountability cases against him with the potential to put him behind bars. Meanwhile, PTI drew the lesson from its 2013 experience to posit the idea that elections are after all a numbers game, so inducting ‘seasonal sparrows’ defecting from other parties is justified for electoral considerations.

The PTI leadership could be forgiven for being surprised by the responses to its ‘pragmatic’ electoral decision. For one, the whole balloon PTI had been huffing and puffing up over the years against corrupt politicians, and the need to take them to task if the promised PTI ‘change’ were to arrive, suddenly had all the air let out of it. The party now appears no different from any other mainstream political organisation in this respect. It is certainly not the party of change that had attracted youth, women and the emerging urban middle class since its surge in 2011.

Secondly, the decision to award party tickets to so-called electables has denied tickets to PTI’s dedicated workers who stuck it out with the party during its lean years (1996-2011) and harboured the legitimate expectancy of being rewarded for their loyalty and sacrifices with election nominations when the party’s moment appeared to have arrived.

On the very cusp of PTI’s triumph (with some help from the establishment, it is alleged), Imran Khan and his party seem hoisted by their own petard: they are not being able to adhere to their long standing ‘change’ rhetoric and are being accosted by the angry workers who they themselves have trained in street agitation and protracted sit-ins. The dilemma Imran Khan has faced in the run-up to the 2018 polls is whether to stick with the electables or accede to his workers’ demands for tickets.

The inherent contradiction between Imran Khan’s ‘revolutionary’ slogans and the realities of electoral politics in Pakistan thus seems to have become obvious with a vengeance. His decision to go along with the electables, mostly if not entirely, clearly means that he has chosen pragmatism over principles and reality over ideology. Whether it propels him into government is difficult to say but what is certain is that he and his party have already lost the momentum for change.

The writer is a veteran journalist who has held senior editorial positions in a number of daily newspapers.

This article was published in the Herald's July 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.