After sweeping the first phase of the local elections in their strongholds of Punjab and Sindh, the PML-N and the PPP will be more optimistic when contesting the second and third phases of the polls. While the signatories to the Charter of Democracy can be assured of doing better in the coming battles, the PTI, the poor third, is left to lick the wounds it suffered in its home province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Only those who understand the political dynamics in rural Pakistan can truly analyze the fortunes of these political parties in the fight for the grassroots democracy, or the third tier of the democratic system, as some prefer to call it.

PTI had certainly made inroads into Punjab but only in urban centers. When it won the by-elections to a National Assembly and a Punjab Assembly seat in Lahore, the citadel of PML-N, on October 11, many expected the victories would help it in the first phase of the local government elections that followed soon. But it bagged only 285 seats of the 2,697 seats in the union council up for grabs in that election. The entrenched PML-N swept 1,192 of them.

Some attribute the PTFs dismal performance to the recent upheavals in the personal life of its leader, Imran Khan. His much publicized and talked about marriage with Reham Khan broke just the day before LG elections. Others fault the party for `its disorganization and frictions` Hardcore traditional politicians of Punjab, however, explain the debacle in `real political terms`. Local council elections have their own dynamics and undercurrents, they say. Rural populations` concerns and choices are far removed from what counts in the national politics.

For instance, after the PML-N`s 1192 seats, the independents bagged most of them in Punjab 1065. Therein lies the real story, according to a senior PTI leader.

`With no reforms of any kind in the police and revenue departments of the province, people always look towards those who exercise influence and get problems resolved,` he reminded in off-the-record comments.

`That is why the independents got elected.

They became independent because the ruling PML-N denied them tickets but had the influence to fight the election on their own and win,` he said. `It is logical for the poor and the disadvantaged to vote a turncoat butillogical to vote an anti-government candidate.

That also explains the reluctance of some P TI members to fight the local government election carrying the cricket bat symbol. Indeed a fewopted for the PML-N symbol of tiger `because their constituents wanted them to do so` Zubair Ahmad, a diehard PTI follower in a union council area in Sialkot district where local elections are to be held on December 3, put it plainly to Dawn.

`Come next general elections, I will not only vote for Imran Khan but will campaign for him, he said. `But, to be honest, for the local governments we have to support the PML-N MPA, Mr Arshad Warriach. Otherwise no development fund would be coming to our village.

A senior PPP office-bearer couldn`t agree more with Zubair`s reasoning. `People in most rural areas of Punjab know that they need a nod from the area`s MNA or MPA to get their most fundamental and constitutionally guaranteed rights like getting an FIR registered with the police or getting over the bureaucratic rigmarole involved in the sale and purchase of land. It`s the ruling party MPAs and MNAs who run this show,` he said.

Naturally, why should the simple folks align with a politician who cannot even put in a word for them, much less accompany them to apolice station or tehsildar`s of fice? Under the local government system introduced by the former military president Pervez Musharraf, the Nazims of then ruling PML-Q used to run the show in all but a few districts of Punjab. `And that principle of the supremacy of the ruling elite will persist until honest and radical reforms are introduced in the basic public service structure,` the PPP leader said.

Certain political families, however, do hold sway in some pockets regardless of any party affiliation, as witnessed in Chakwal, Gujrat and Lala Musa in the first phase of local elections.

In Chakwal, the independent candidates put up by former district Nazim, Sardar Ghulam Abbas, won 33 of the 68 union council chairman seats against 28 of the PML-N juggernaut.

Similarly, although the PML-N won 59 seats of the total 115 union council seats in the Gujrat district, the clan of its arch rivals, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and Chaudhry Parvez Elahialso managed a third of that number.