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The Election Campaigns Hit the Screens

By admin ⋅ February 16, 2008 ⋅ 118 views ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

With Pakistan’s elections scheduled for next Monday, the political parties are in their final press for votes.  As noted earlier, Asif Ali Zardari is leading the People’s Party campaigning in Punjab.  The PPP will perform well in Sindh, outside of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) stronghold of Karachi.  The real battle has been and always will be for Punjab.  Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League (PML-Q) will capture much of northern, urban Punjab.  The Muslim League-Quaid faction will compete with the PML-N and PPP for lesser developed southern Punjab.The respective strongholds and contested areas figure into each party’s political ads.  The website, PKPolitics, has posted some of the television advertisements from the PML-N, PML-Q, and PPP.

The People’s Party has been rallying on the cult of Bhutto.  Their two advertisements features what appears to be clips from Benazir’s final speech at Liaquat Bagh.  An impassioned Benazir cries out in one ad, “Bhutto is not dead!  Bhutto is alive!”   She was referring to her father, but now these last words of hers are posthumously applied to her.  In another ad, Benazir says, “They can’t keep me away from my country’s people….Our living is together.  Our dying is together.”  The PPP is running not on a track record of policy achievement, but on a track record of producing martyrs.  This is what will push it forward in Sindh, parts of Punjab, and pockets of Balochistan and the NWFP.

From the PPP’s ‘Benazir the Martyr’, we come to the PML-N and its theme ‘Nawaz the Lion’.  Sharif’s advertisements are long–a reflection of the type of money he has put into his campaign.

The first PML-N advertisement features a nice jingle with this chorus: “The entire country has one chant: the lion [Nawaz] is ours.”  It depicts Nawaz as the custodian of the poor, a bridge builder, defender of the judiciary and the media, and initiator of many mega development projects, such as the coastal highway.  Sharif seeks to revive the public association of him with pro-growth economic policies and large development projects while also mixing two more timely issues: rising pressure on the poor (via inflation, etc.) and the attacks on the judiciary and media.

The second PML-N advertisement is effectively a speech by Nawaz to the people of Pakistan.  He says he’s not here for personal reasons, but for the service of Pakistan.  Sharif urges voters to go out to the polls on February 18, stating that their decision next Monday is as important as the one made on August 14, 1947 (Pakistan’s day of independence).  He calls on voters to send a message to “all those forces” (i.e. Musharraf and the PML-Q) that have put Pakistan in its present predicament marked by broken institutions, rising terror, uncertainty, and economic woes.  A vote for the PML-N is a vote for truth, justice, and change.

Pervez Musharraf’s preferred party, the PML-Q, won’t even show him in its advertisements.  Previously, PML-Q ads would depict both Pervaiz Elahi (former Punjab chief minister) and Musharraf.  For much of this year, a PML-Q (or Punjab provincial government) ad had Elahi stating at its end, “Every step is toward happiness.”   That ad was pulled sometime in the fall — perhaps after the October assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto.

The PML-Q has lacked a central charismatic figure.  Viewed as a King’s party formed of servile opportunists, its major patron (Musharraf) is now its greatest liability.  Lacking any real definition, the party presents itself as the same Muslim League led by Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.  Though it has done this since its inception — the “Q” stands for Quaid-e Azam (the Great Leader), the honorific given to Jinnah — we see this done a bit more aggressively in the PML-Q’s final election 2008 push.

Its first ad begins with audio of a crowd chanting “Long live Quaid-e Azam!  Long live the Muslim League!” pulled from the Pakistan independence movement archives.  This segment is followed by audio of Jinnah declaring the education of Pakistan’s young people as an imperative.  Then a narrator says assertively, “Quaid-e Azam’s mission is the Muslim League’s mission.”   He claims that the PML-Q has offered free education and books for primary and secondary school students.  They have pushed forward Jinnah’s mission and they will complete it.

Its second ad is similar to Nawaz’s first as it rolls through a list of claimed developmental achievements ranging from free education and medical care to the development of the new port in Gwadar.  Interestingly, Nawaz Sharif’s ad posited him as the initiator of this plan.

The political advertisements provide a revealing lens on the campaign strategies of Pakistan’s political parties.  The People’s Party has been light on policy, though it has long been associated with the pro-poor slogan “Roti, Kapra, Makan” (Bread, Clothing, and a Home), and bullish on its newest martyr, Benazir Bhutto.  Before Benazir’s murder, the PPP mobilized the masses with a charismatic populism, and this approach has only intensified afterward.  Both the Muslim League-Quaid and Muslim League-Nawaz present themselves as results-oriented governors behind far-reaching economic development and humanitarian projects.  Both try to say, “We get stuff done.”  But while the PML-Q lacks a popular base and a central figure, Nawaz Sharif has a loyal following in northern Punjab and transformed from a Zia-protege to a man of his own semi-charismatic self.  He has long been the development guy, but now Sharif also seeks to be the defender of the judiciary, media, and inflation-struck poor and middle classes.

Original Post at The Election Campaigns Hit the Screens by The Pakistan Policy Blog