The writer is a journalist.
BACK in 2013, a friend of mine was certain that the PML-N had rigged the Lahore seat won by Khwaja Saad Rafique. Fast forward five years and he was convinced the Imran Khan victory in Lahore was engineered. He wasn’t the only one. The conviction came not from specific incidents but the larger context in which the election took place.
In a seminar held shortly after the 2013 election, two senior people who monitor elections, argued that a fair and free election — as much as it can be in our neck of the woods — is determined in the run-up to the election. If the playing field is level, as they stated it was in 2013, the wrongdoings and irregularities on election day itself were rather insignificant in comparison. As an example, they focused on the 2002 election as one in which changes in law and zameer ki awaz (conscience) being heard clearly was enough to determine the unfairness of the election. No such thing happened in 2013, it was said.