The Case of the Statistical Setback

I HAVE had little sleep this week because of the general elections and related matters. I am, of course, surprised at the outcome. The National Assembly  count should have been closer than 105-45 in favour of the IJI . But do not at all agree with Mrs. Bhutto  when she says that had there been no rigging, the PDA  would have won anything between 70 and 80 seats in the Punjab  alone.

          The PPP  had done nothing during its 20 months of brief authority to do better than it had done in 1988. It had to lose some of the seats it had won two years ago. It could not hope, in all fairness, to improve on its 1988 tally. If they had strength of 93 in the sacked house; they must, of necessity, have gone below that level this time around even if it was by one solitary seat.

          We have all talked of the sympathy surge for Mrs. Bhutto  after her dismissal on August 6, but almost everyone has ignored the hatred factor, which inspired the campaign against her. I think she made more enemies than friends during her stint in office. Then, the allies in the PDA  did nothing to enhance her vote-winning ability. The Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-e-Jafaria , especially, must have lost her more Sunni votes than it won Shia votes. Also, by aligning itself with an avowedly sectarian party, the PPP  acted in grave violation of its own founding principles.

          The PDA  lost as much because of the rigging it alleges to have taken place as due to its organisational ineptness and its inability to prevent electoral wrongdoing. If there was rigging and its extent was 10.76 percent, other factors for the PDA debacle were: organisational ineptness, 10.24 percent; inability to prevent rigging when it was taking place, 29 percent; the caretakers' partiality, 25 percent; and too much dependence on Mrs. Bhutto 's personal charisma, another 25 percent.

          The feeling in the PDA  camp was: one B. B. jalsa , one Jaloos , and the votes would be making a beeline for her ballot boxes. Let us concede, for the sake of argument, that there was rigging, and of the order claimed by Mrs. Bhutto . She says she has the fingerprints of those who fixed the fight. Poor thing. She should be lamenting like Mustafa Zaidi:

Mein kiss kay hath pe apna lahoo talash karoon
Tamam shehr ne pehney hooyay hein dastany
(On whose hand should I look for my blood/ The whole city is wearing gloves)

          The PDA -an ill-conceived alliance-depended too heavily on Mrs. Bhutto . A leader, no matter how charismatic, no matter how brilliant, must have lieutenants able to keep the tempo generated by him or her alive. In 1969-70, Mrs. Bhutto  had the Talpurs, Mr. Jatoi , Hafeez Pirzada , Mumtaz Bhutto , and others to keep the campaign going, when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto  was out touring the Punjab .

          In the Punjab , the PPP  had a young and volatile Ghulam Mustafa Khar , Haneef Ramay, Sheikh  Rashid  (to shout socialism), and many nameless young activists who took Bhutto 's fight to every town and hamlet. In the NWFP  and Balochistan , Mr. Bhutto had no one to lend him a helping hand and so he lost both provinces.

          In 1988, Mrs. Bhutto  made it all on her own, but even so failed to win an absolute majority; while the family charisma still stood her in good stead. This year, charisma, since it had not been matched by hard work when the party was in power, wore off considerably. Mrs. Bhutto  now claims that there has been massive rigging. Let us have a look at the statistics of the setback.

Percentage of votes polled in the Punjab :

                           1988                                       1990

PP/PDA                  39.80                                      38.65

IJI                         37.50                                      49.41

Others                  22.70                                      11.94

PPP  vote loss = 39.80 - 38.65 = 1.15

Vote loss by others = 22.70 - 11.94 = 10.76

IJI  vote gain = PDA  + others' losses = 1.15 + 10.76 = 11.91

IJI  voter, 1990 over 1988 = 37.50 +11.91= 49.41

The above figures relate to the Punjab  only where the PDA  suffered its worst debacle. Now, a swing of 11.91, nearly 12 percent is a huge swing. It is the sort of swing, which leads to landslide victories, and a landslide victory it was indeed for the IJI .

          When Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan  claims a percentage variable of 0.2 percent in favour of the IJI  and a seat ratio of 105 = 45, he talks of nationwide figures. He forgets of the IJI's 105 seats, 91 were won in the Punjab . He should be keeping the 11.91 percent swing and not the 0.2 percent variable in mind.

          Mrs. Bhutto  cuts it even finer. No, madam, those who fixed the fight, fixed it not at your expense but at the expense of others, mostly independents and small parties whose share of the votes polled was reduced from 22.70 to 11.94 percent. This means that 10.76 percent of the votes polled by the others were claimed by the IJI . The PPP  lost just 1.15 percent compared to 1988 and most of this loss occurred in Sindh , not in the Punjab . Indeed, in absolute terms, the PPP may have polled more votes than it did in 1988.

          Truth is known to Allah  alone. But statistically, the PDA  has no case. The IJI  didn't rob the PDA vote bank. It halved the dispersal of the floating vote and converted almost every fight with the PDA into a one-to-one contest in the Punjab . And that's it. Wrongdoing has to be proved by those who lay the charge. If political parties were only to acquire the habit of admitting their own weaknesses rather than accuse opponents for their misfortune!

* * * * *

AND now a few tailpieces:

   I  A friend says that the diplomatic corps in Islamabad  has been factionalised by the elections. Now they are Embassy-A (IJI  group), Embassy-B (PDA  group), and so on. The same, he says, is true of the observer groups, which came here to monitor the elections.

   II Another friend says Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan  should go to Gujrat  and do penance in his home village. "Let him go to a hermitage and do Chilla . Forty days of silence may do him a world of good," says he.

   III   A third friend from Faisalabad  says there was much betting in his district with the PDA  5-1 favourites. Millions of rupees were lost. "People put house for house on the PPP  and lost. Another one lost a jeep-for-jeep gamble," he says.

IV  This same friend from Faisalabad  says: This has been the only election I have seen in which presiding officers asked candidates where the rigging was! Smart work.

V    Again, my Faisalabad  friend says he doesn't agree with me when I accuse the PPP / PDA  of organisational ineptitude. The PPP had no organisation to begin with and you can't accuse of anyone of losing a quality, which he didn't have to begin with.

Wednesday, October 31, 1990