Reality check: Pakistan: Focus - Why religious parties were routed in the polls
Pakistan’s six party religious alliance, the MMA, suffered a major political defeat in February’s general elections, having secured only six seats in the nation’s parliament.
This is a far cry from the 2002 general elections, when it emerged as the third largest group with 62 seats in the national assembly and won a landslide victory in the troubled north-western region of Pakistan.
“When the frenzied feelings were over, the people found in the religious parties, bigotry and incompetence and therefore they rejected them massively and pulled their weight behind the secular and liberal political parties,” Haider told AKI.