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The Barelvi vote
[DAWN] HERE’S the good news: the elections in Bloody Karachi...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... may have been stolen by local strongmen from ostensibly establishment-backed religious groups. The bad news: the Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistain (TLP), a right-wing Barelvi group, may have legitimately won seats in Karachi. The 2018 election witnessed the rise of the TLP, which has enabled the creation of powerful narratives about the legitimacy of bad boy thought among Pakistain’s voters. Experts claim the party has tapped into widely held beliefs, even in a relatively liberal and religiously diverse city like Karachi. On the other hand, the TLP may have also been part of an attempt to rig the polls against incumbents PML-N, PPP and MQM. For perhaps the first time in Karachi’s history, it is possible to examine the legitimacy of these results. Thanks to the delimitation efforts of the Pakistain Bureau of Statistics and their census unit, each National Assembly seat in Karachi encapsulates at least one, if not two, complete provincial assembly constituency. For example, voters from PS-107 and PS-108 will only cast votes for NA-246 ‐ previously, provincial seats regularly intersected national seats. Posted by: Fred 2018-08-16 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=520846 |