Rawalpindi, Pakistan – Muhammed Iqrar stands in front of his small shop in Muslim Town, a commercial area in Rawalpindi. Something’s wrong, he says.

“We have a general election in less than a month, but I can’t remember our area ever being this dead before,” says the 46-year-old.

“We used to have pennants, banners, flags and music played from the speakers of the various candidates. … It used to be a festival. It’s just so quiet now.”

Pakistan, a country of 241 million people, is scheduled to hold its delayed national elections on February 8. But the vote was affected by this Allegations of manipulation made by the main opposition party led by jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Khan, by many reports the country’s most popular politician, has been behind bars since August on various charges. He’s also excluded from standing over his conviction in cases he believes are part of a military-backed crackdown against him and his party.

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

Two days after the Supreme Court’s decision, Maryam Nawaz, daughter of the three-time former prime minister, was convicted Nawaz SharifShe kicked off her party’s election campaign on Monday with a rally in the town of Okara in Punjab province, the crucial region in the polls.

“People are not interested”

But the lack of a real opposition has made the run-up to the elections a tepid affair – something Iqrar says he has never experienced in the past.

As a supporter of Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) party, he remembers participating in election campaigns, door-to-door distribution of flags and invitations to street meetings.

“We used to get going about two or three months before the elections. We put up flags of our leaders and tried to get people involved. But now it seems like people are not interested at all,” he says.

Maqbool Sharif Toor, a retired government employee, agrees. Toor, a resident of Babu Mohalla, a densely populated neighborhood in central Rawalpindi, said he was not sure whether the elections would go ahead as planned. Earlier this week, Iran fired missiles into Pakistan that it said targeted “terrorist” bases, prompting retaliatory strikes from Pakistan. These tensions have led to further uncertainty over whether the February 8 elections will actually take place as planned.

“One party was completely sidelined, which ruined the competition. We loved the “Halla Gulla” [cacophony] during the election campaign, but now there is hardly anything here,” he says.

Pakistan’s 12th general election is taking place under a cloud of political and economic instability and a deteriorating security situation.

The vote was originally scheduled for November, but the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said it needed more time to redraw constituencies based on the census conducted last year.

Political instability in Pakistan began in April 2022 when Khan was removed from power by a no-confidence vote in parliament. The former cricket icon accused the “establishment” – a euphemism for the country’s powerful military – of orchestrating his ouster.

Since his ouster, Khan has been in the military’s crosshairs and was once seen as its sponsor and architect of his rise to power in 2018.

Chaudhry Mussadiq Ghumman, a PTI candidate in Rawalpindi, says the state’s lawsuits against his party have left many voters disillusioned.

“The trials against us meant we never knew whether we would be allowed to run or not and now our leader is in prison and our symbol has been taken away. In such an environment it is difficult to prepare for an election campaign,” he says.

Ghumman also claims that the PTI opponents’ rallies and public meetings have been met with a muted response from the people.

Analysts say that despite clear directions from the Supreme Court and repeated assurances from the ECP, the prevailing mood among voters is “uncertainty” over whether the vote will take place or be further delayed.

“There is so much skepticism among people. It seems a deliberate tactic was used to keep the election temperature down,” says political commentator Zaigham Khan.

While the PTI struggled with legal hurdles and the cancellation of candidate nominations, the candidates for the other two major parties, the PMLN and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), were announced only last week.

Ahsan Iqbal, a PMLN candidate from Narowal town in Punjab, said the delay was due to a “tiring process of vetting names to be nominated”.

“We wanted to ensure transparency in our selection process,” he says. “Our campaign will gain even more momentum in the coming days.”

Waleed Ashfaq, who runs a printing shop in Lahore’s Anarkali market, says his constituency used to have so many banners and posters on the streets that city authorities had to remove them every week, only for new banners to appear the next day .

“People used to book us two or three months in advance. This time we even put advertisements on the street, but no one came,” he says.

“Political parties, their candidates and staff would print flags, shirts, key chains and other memorabilia, but there is little order in the market this year. It seems like people are just bored and uninterested.”

“Imagine if Imran Khan wasn’t in prison”

Muhammad Meeran Mohmand, owner of a furniture shop in Tarnol, a suburb of Islamabad, says his neighborhood has always seen lively competition during elections, but no political activity has started there this year.

“I think that politicians are assessing the mood of the population. They know that we have no trust in the system or in these politicians. They have nothing to offer. They cannot give us water, jobs, or help create businesses. They can’t fix our roads, let alone the country’s economy,” he says.

“I don’t think people will go to the polls. They are so disillusioned.”

Hamza Ali Haroon, an independent candidate in the same area, says he has been campaigning for a week but people are “sick and fed up” with politicians.

“Most of the candidates are the same old faces. These PMLN and PPP candidates used to contest when I was eight or ten years old. Who will listen to them today?” asks Haroon, now 33.

Islamabad-based analyst Ahmed Ijaz believes that the muted political campaign could be a deliberate ploy by the PMLN and the PPP.

“If the campaign had been in full swing and relatively free, there could have been slogans against the military establishment given the situation in the country over the last two years. Maybe the idea is to control the nature of the campaign,” he says.

This tactic, Ijaz said, could result in relatively low voter turnout and potentially favor the PMLN, the party that many in Pakistan believe will be backed by the military this time.

“Imagine if Imran Khan wasn’t in jail or his party wasn’t facing the crackdown that exists. I’m sure we won’t have this conversation now. The election campaign would be at its peak.”