Unfortunately, however, the situation has provided many radical pessimists an opportunity to paint a grim picture of prospects of political and economic stability in the country and there will be many irrational optimists who would blindly succumb to such grave assertions.
Nobody could have anticipated that a party, PML-N, that has registered an emphatic victory in the 2013 election, and its electoral allies, particularly Pir Pagaro's PML-F, would be causing a near lockdown in various parts of Sindh less than a week after the elections.
No one had any idea or notion that PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif's visit to a hospitalised Imran where he invited the PTI chief to a "friendly match" would only embolden the latter to foster more boldness and courage in relation to his demand for a partial recount in Punjab constituencies by issuing a 72-hour ultimatum.
Characterised by irony or mockery or both, the KP situation is equally complex and fraught with grave forebodings. While a fuming Maulana Fazlur Rahman challenges the legitimacy and fairness of the PTI mandate in a province where the latter stands bright chances to form a coalition government, a battered and bruised lot of Baloch politicians questions the legitimacy of "unexpected" results particularly in areas that, according to them, have always witnessed voting patterns strictly in accordance with ethnic and demographic lines and sensibilities.
MQM, the only party from the last multi-party coalition government that has suffered minimal damage to its traditional mandate and emerged largely unscathed despite plagued by the incumbency factor, ended its sit-in in front of Sindh Election Commission office only in the wee hours of yesterday morning; and it braces for more protests as warranted by the evolving situation.
While the PPP has suffered a major setback, its two other major coalition partners PML-Q and ANP have experienced a near annihilation in this election. Suffering from a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment and unworthiness, the leadership of these parties now have every reason to derive a sort of sadistic pleasure from the situation insofar as the polling conundrum is concerned.
The successful passage of the 20th Constitutional Amendment aimed at ensuring fair and transparent elections under a bipartisan caretaker set-up has met with an ignominious defeat one year later. While the very vision of a neutral caretaker set-up stood vitiated by an ill-intentioned political set-up and bureaucratic establishment, the law enforcement agencies were forced to choose between the options of providing security to people or stopping acts of thuggery at polling booths.
It would be prudent to remember that the election 2013 was an extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment in the face of profound doubts deepened by factors, among others, of unprecedented election violence. Unfortunately, however, almost all parties appear to be hell-bent on squandering this historic opportunity through their recourse to petty, bad-tempered quarrels and squabbles over election results.
Sheikh Rashid, who has successfully milked the arrival of satellite television in Pakistan to his great advantages through his seemingly bold, blunt and crude utterances, has earned the reputation of making grim, mocking expressions and cynical comments. One such sardonic comment by him was about Nawaz Sharif's victory as the final step towards becoming third-time prime minister.
Expressing a feeling of discontent and resentment aroused by the successes of the PML-N chief, Rashid told a TV channel that "though no one can change the success lines in the palm of Nawaz Sharif's hand, history shows us that the PML-N has always fallen under its own weight". He was clearly referring to the profound and tragic fate and premature end of Nawaz Sharif's government in 1999 when it enjoyed a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
In spite of everything and anything that Sheikh Rashid and other PML-N detractors say, the onus of responsibility clearly shifts to top vote getters such as PML-N and PTI. These two parties in particular are required to rise to the occasion and make this general election a success by demonstrating flexibility and making concessions. It is widely expected that Nawaz must have drawn a bitter lesson from history that a country without democracy and a politician without a country have far worse fates than the fate of a dog at a mourner's house.
The writer is newspaper's News Editor