Pakistan goes to polls even as partisan acrimony runs deep

Having been tortured by supporters of a political party in Pakistan, a donkey - "beaten to a pulp, punched in the face and abdomen several times, nose broken, kicked all over body" a week ago - has died of wounds. The donkey's body was covered in rope marks and a vehicle had also rammed into him, said an animal rescue organisation that had taken the animal in. They said they had blurred out whatever was written on his body before posting his pictures on the Facebook. The outrageous occurrence followed the head of the political party calling the workers of his archrival party "donkeys" (a South Asian colloquialism for stupidity) in the run-up to July 25 general elections in the country that witnessed a muckraking season at its worst.
The poll season also saw politicians switching sides as parties gave tickets to entrenched local powerbrokers known as "electables". Embracing the turncoats, they risked damage to their image as harbingers of change in their endeavour to open up a path to power for themselves. Taking opportunists who switch allegiance to maintain access to resources has once been scorned. Now it is called the "art of contesting elections". According to the Election Commission of Pakistan,  independent candidates are dominating the parliamentary seats nomination.
A total of 11,855 candidates are contesting for 849 seats of provincial and national assemblies, of which more than 6,000 candidates are independent. Political parties have fielded more than 5,500 candidates for the polls. There are a total of 342 seats in the National Assembly. Of these, 272 are filled by direct elections. In addition, 10 seats are reserved for religious minorities and 60 seats for women, to be filled by proportional representation among parties with more than 5 per cent of the vote. Winning over the returning independent candidates will have a price the party that tries to make government after elections will have to pay.
Major parties in the fray are the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) that won a landslide victory in the last election, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) running an anti-graft campaign, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Awami National Party (ANP), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), and Muttahida Majlis e Amal (MMA), an umbrella group of several right-wing religious political parties, the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) and the Grand Democratic Alliance.
As many as 305 female candidates will contest on general seats of the National Assembly after around 45 political parties out of total 107 have awarded tickets to them fulfilling their legal obligation of allocating five percent seats to women under the Election Act-2017. Sixty female candidates are also there in the field as independent candidates.
The Muslim-majority country of 207 million gave transgender citizens the right to vote in 2011. Three transgender candidates are also running for seats in the National Assembly, as well as two others for seats in provincial legislatures.
A considerable number of minority candidates are also contesting the election for general seats of national and provincial assemblies across the country.
These pride points aside, almost all the parties are appealing to the religious beliefs of the people. However, several candidates have been found to incite hatred against other political parties and leaders questioning their beliefs. Banners inscribed with different religious slogans to lure voters can be seen at several places.
Television advertisements carried footage of candidates offering prayers several times to show how religious they were. Even a political party went to the extent of writing on its banners, "give a vote and get paradise". Themselves resorting to confrontational rules of engagement and abrasive adversarialism, they have presented voters with polar choices to the detriment of the society. A study into Bangladesh's political polarisation has pointed out that the country's contentious national politics have played a role in enabling the militancy's resurgence. Pakistan has a lesson in the study of reversing the polarisation, lest the chasms should be manipulated by the forces it says it has defeated in its war on terror.
Partisan acrimony, deeper than at any point in the country's history, has been showing itself up both in politics and in people's lives. Yet, the rancor taking the life of an animal has made political animals who vouch for civility and collegial deference in political contests to hang their heads in shame.
Waqar Mustafa is a print, broadcast and online journalist and commentator based in Pakistan