Many Pakistanis abstain or vote for jailed Imran Khan’s loyalists

Lahore – Under the dizzying lights and gleaming monuments of Pakistan’s cultural capital Lahore, Sidra Bilal’s mind drifts to her rural hometown, a backwater of broken promises that led her to abstain from the general elections.

“They’re as different from each other as the sky is from the earth,” said the 27-year-old, who relocated to Lahore six years ago from the hardscrabble town of Head Balloki, 50km away.

In the 8 February election, the army-backed Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) had been tipped to win a majority, reliant on its traditional support base of Punjab province, where Lahore sits.

Instead, dejected voters from towns around Punjab chose to abstain or vote for candidates loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, leaving the Sharifs no choice but to forge a shaky coalition in order to clinch power.

In Pakistan’s most populous province, the election result signalled that voters were weary of decades of failed development pledges from the Sharifs for areas outside Lahore.

Bilal’s family are stalwart PML-N supporters and pleaded she cast her ballot for them.

To protest the ongoing dearth of schools and health care in her hometown, which had spurred her migration to Lahore, she abstained. “I did not vote,” said Bilal, who works as an editor. “I could not bring myself to stand with the wrong side.”

Home to around 14 million people, Lahore has sucked up half of Punjab’s development budget in recent years, according to government data.

The investment means less than 10% of Lahoris live below the poverty line, but in other parts of Punjab that number jumps to around 70%. “Lahore is a big city, the heart of Pakistan. There is a lot of development here,” Shah Zaman explained from his office at a publishing firm.

But when he makes the 140km journey to his home near the city of Okara, Zaman said the little work achieved by the PML-N is “mostly useless”.

Three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who often campaigned sporting a Gucci baseball cap, had been expected to sweep into power after analysts say he received the backing of the army, which turned against Khan.

The PML-N, however, increased their elected seats in the national assembly and Punjab provincial parliament by only slim margins.

Nawaz flew back from years of self-imposed medical exile in London to lead the election campaign after allegedly cutting a deal with the military that saw his graft convictions dissolve.

Now the PML-N are poised to take power only through a coalition, and the position of prime ministers is set to go to Nawaz’s brother Shehbaz, who is considered to be softer and more pliable to military influence. –