‘Used to be a festival’: Why Pakistan is seeing a subdued election campaign

The crackdown and censure on the main opposition party turns the run-up to the February 8 election into a lukewarm affair.

Rawalpindi, Pakistan – Muhammed Iqrar stands outside his small shop in Muslim Town, a commercial area in Rawalpindi. Something is amiss, he says.

“We have general elections in less than a month, but I don’t recall our area being so dead before,” the 46-year-old says.

“We used to have buntings, banners, flags, music blaring from the speakers put up by different candidates. … It used to be a festival. Now, it’s just so quiet.”

Pakistan, a country of 241 million people, is scheduled to hold its delayed national elections on February 8. But the vote has been tainted by allegations of rigging made by the main opposition party, headed by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Khan, by many accounts the country’s most popular politician, has been behind bars since August under various charges. He is also barred from standing in the elections due to his conviction in cases he says are part of a military-backed crackdown on him and his party.

Last week, Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party was stripped of its election symbol, a cricket bat, through a Supreme Court order, leaving its leaders with no choice but to fight as independents with their own individual symbols. In a country with a literacy rate of 60 percent, election symbols are necessary to help voters identify the parties they support on the ballots.

Two days after the top court’s decision, Maryam Nawaz, daughter of three-time former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, kickstarted her party’s campaign on Monday with a rally in the city of Okara in Punjab province, the deciding region in the polls.

But the absence of any real opposition has