Islamabad, Feb 11 : In the wake of former premier Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, election talk has centred on a ‘sympathy wave’ at the ballot box for the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

As politicians have sparred over and commentators tussled with the wave, number crunching and dispassionate electoral analysis has been pushed aside.

On the eve of Pakistan’s eighth general election, little light has been shed on the wave phenomenon. What constitutes a wave and will there be one? Does the wave even matter?

Several factors are important. One: Indisputably, a successful wave will be measured against the PPP’s success in elections past. But what is the measure of a successful wave?

The answer, as it turns out, is complicated. A good starting point is the percentage of total votes cast for the PPP.

The party has never won more than 40 per cent of the votes in any election since 1988. In the last two elections, this figure remained between 20 per cent and 26 per cent.

If the PPP bags 40 per cent of the votes on Feb 18, the party will undoubtedly claim that their predictions of a wave are validated. But this figure would only return the party to its base support, given that the party claimed widespread rigging against it in the last two rounds of elections.

A more promising measure of the wave would be the total number of votes the party bags. The PPP’s vote bank has been lodged firmly in the region of 7.5 million to 8 million votes since 1988, barring the catastrophic elections of 1997 where its take was nearly halved.

If more votes make a wave, then the PPP has good reason to worry. In 2002, the party bagged fewer votes than it did in 1988, despite the fact that the total number of votes cast increased by over 10 million over the same period.

How can the PPP get its vote bank to cross 10 million, a figure that would be clear enough to constitute a sympathy wave? Well, the party needs a higher turnout on election day.

Achieving that may be difficult. In the five elections held since 1988, the turnout has ranged between 35 per cent and 45 per cent. In 1988, the first election contested by the PPP since its founder was killed, the turnout was only 40 per cent.

If the history and numbers are not on the PPP’s side, then the current climate holds even less promise. If voters perceive that the manufactured ‘transition to democracy’ scheme concocted by the president will not be dislodged, a perception that last year’s events will have reinforced, then the party will struggle to energise the electorate beyond its base.

Within the party, the unseemly public quarrelling over the prime ministerial slot has reminded many of Zardari’s uneasy relationship with the party rank and file.

If the sympathy wave is confined to Sindh, the PPP group in parliament may be little different to the one in 2002. With 20 out of 61 seats available in Karachi and the party’s ability to outmuscle the MQM in urban Sindh considered slim, even a sweep of the rest of the province will mean only a handful of seats more than the 27 it picked up in
2002.

It is no secret that national elections are won or lost in the Punjab, and any successful wave must sweep through this province. Northern Punjab has never been kind to the PPP, so the focus will be on central and southern Punjab. And this is where the issue becomes more complicated.

The PPP was routed in central and southern Punjab in 1997 and struggled again for traction there in 2002. With 134 seats up for grabs there, the party cannot afford a losing trifecta.

Meanwhile, the PML-Q is limping and on the back foot, but state backing nevertheless makes it a formidable contender.

Third: Rigging. It is an ever present threat and one that makes the PML-Q a formidable force still in the Punjab.

Fourth: History is only a guide. Extrapolating from past electoral results whether there will be a wave or not is fraught with problems, not least because all results since 1988 are believed to have been massaged to some degree. Equally, the pundits’ glib pronouncements ought to be taken with a heavy dose of scepticism.

So will there be a sympathy wave? In truth, the answer to that will only be known on February 18, the Dawn reported. (ANI)