Poll-itics in Pakistan post-elections

Politics and Governance in the democracies is no longer about voting and elections.  Polls – exit polls and opinion polls – now play a significant role in the everyday scenario.  Bush’s popularity goes up or down – says the poll.. and that starts to reveal in his decisions.  Similarly it affects when the candidates are elected.

Opinion Polls were significant in the Pakistani elections as it is in most other countries but it intrigued me when I found out that Pollsters were now ready to give direction to the fledgling democracy based on people’s voice based on statistics!

After the elections, the scenario in Pakistan is set for a coalition.  Who will PPP join is the question.  Some say that PML-N (or Nawaz league) is whom they should join based on the results.  But then there is PML-Q – which is backed by Musharraf.  Now, this mandate is supposed to have been a dress-down for Musharraf so it is strange and useless to have Musharraf in through the backdoor!

That makes sense.

Hence this poll that went to the people and asked them on how they want the parties to behave.  The topicality and relevance (time-wise) of the poll is very intriguing.  In one way it gives a lot of power to the pollsters to affect a democracy, but on the other than it gives voice to the desire of the common man (extrapolated voice, albeit) and saves a nation from Machiavellian nonsense of the politicians – who are by “Religion” Greedy and without conscience!

This is almost like a turbo-charged democracy.

Let us now see how and if the politicians in a new democracy will be affected by the polls or simply brush it away and still go ahead with their own agendas?