Smruti Pattanaik’s Article on Pakistan Muslim League’s Victory Published in The Daily Star

Research Fellow, IDSA, Dr Smruti S Pattanaik’s article titled, ‘Will Nawaz Sharif be a game changer?’ was published in The Daily Star on May 14, 2013. The article analyses the victory of Mr Nawaz Sharif and his party, Pakistan Muslim League, in the recently concluded elections in Pakistan.

Excerpt

THE 2013 elections in Pakistan, historic in more than one sense, have thrown up interesting results. Though many had predicted the victory of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz, PML-N), but it surpassed many expectations and estimates as it performed extremely well both in the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies in spite of the challenge of so-called PTI (Pakistan Tehreek Insaf) tsunami. It was expected that the PTI which campaigned very hard and promised ‘Naya Pakistan’ would make a dent into PML-N constituency. The voters turnout according to some estimate was sixty percent which may have helped the PTI in gaining more than thirty seats in the National Assembly for the first time. It has emerged as the third political force after the PML-N and the Pakistan’s Peoples Party (PPP). The vote also attested that voters exercised their mandate and voted out a government that was labeled as corrupt, inefficient and with an unenviable economic performance.

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