Balochistan: Seasonal Supporters of Political Parties

A B Khan

Roaming around the capital city of Balochistan, one can assess that the province, like others, has a strong presence of political parties. Although, the statistics in terms of turnout rate of all the previous election negates the presence of a strong political association in Balochistan. Contrary to that people are supporting Political parties to the best of their limit.

The turnout rate, in Balochistan, in previous election was 36% compared to Punjab’s 57%. Despite of this low turnout, political parties in Balochistan enjoy a great deal of support and it would be fair to call this support a “seasonal support”. The sign of this seasonal support is the flags placed on the dashboards of the supporter’s car. This seasonal support is only for the tenure of a ruling party of Balochistan for five years or the terms decided between the coalition parties.

Sign of this seasonal support is the flags placed on the dashboards of the supporter’s car

The sale and place of flags, in the car, changes with the tenure of ruling party. During the last tenure of Pakistan People Party, everyone was obsessed with the PPP flag and was die hard supporter, but nowadays they are divided into NP, PKMAP and PML (N) supporters because these three parties are in power.

The aim of these seasonal supporters is not political, but rather to show off or bully the officials. These seasonal supporters enjoy every luxury such as violating the traffic signals, wrong parking or entering a government office without passes. The trend of placing political party’s flags on the dashboard of cars is getting more common in young people as they consider it a status symbol.  The political parties in Balochistan are considered to be sacred that is why the government officials will not dare not to stop them. The officials who challenge these seasonal supporters’ cars will have to face the music.

In developed countries only Government officials are allowed to place a flag on their cars and that flag would be the National flag; contrary to their political association. Here in Balochistan, anyone having a luxury car and flag on his car’s dashboard can enjoy the status of Government official.