PML-N did not boycott the Feb 8 general elections

On February 7, 2024, posts circulated on social media platform X claiming that the PML-N had boycotted the general elections nationwide, including in Punjab. However, no such announcement was made by the party.

Claim

PML-N has boycotted the elections in the entire country, including Punjab

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.

To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team ran the circulated image through image manipulation tools to investigate if it was being tampered with and also whether the PML-N made any such announcement.

HOW IT STARTED

On February 7, 2024, a social media user, who appears to be a PTI supporter based on his past posts, shared a post on platform X, stating: “Breaking News: PML-N has boycotted the elections in the entire country, including Punjab. All the workers were instructed not to go out to vote and stay at home”.

The post gained over 36,000 views and was reshared 1,600 times on X.

The same circulated image of the PML-N announcing the election boycott was shared by PTI supporters here and here with 33,000 and 13,000 views respectively.

In addition to it, a 16-second video was posted by an account named “PMLN Official” on social media platform X on Feb 7 with the caption: “The leader of Muslim League-N, Mr Nawaz Sharif, boycotted the election of February 8 yesterday in an emergency press conference. All the workers are requested to remain calm, the future action plan will be announced by the party leadership soon”.

The video gained over 259,000 views and was reshared 2,900 times.

The same video was found shared on social media platform TikTok here and here and was viewed by 70,000 and 3,100 users, respectively.

Regarding the claim, some PTI supporters also shared alleged images from different news channels that ran the purported development on February 8 with the headline: “PML-N announced a boycott of the elections”.

The posts were shared here and here with view counts of 28,000 and 10,000, respectively.

METHODOLOGY

The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim which circulated on social media platforms a day before the Feb 8 polls.

Firstly, the iVerify Platform investigated the circulated images of news channels allegedly sharing the boycott development.

The iVerify Pakistan team noticed that the logos of the news channels — Dunya News, Aaj News and GNN — were not only different from those officially used by the outlets but also different in sizes.

To verify the observation, the iVerify platform ran each of the alleged screengrabs through image manipulation detection tools such as Fake Image Detector.

As per the results, all four images were either “computer generated or modified”.

The iVerify Pakistan team also checked the video of PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif circulating on X in which he announced the election boycott and found that the video dates back to November 2007.

The video was uploaded by news agency AP on July 2015 with the title: “Opposition leaders announce they will boycott January elections”.

Following is the transcript of the clip at the 43-second mark in which Nawaz made the same remarks as in the video shared in the claim:

Nawaz: “The All Parties Conference (APC) is reiterating its principled stance, and we are in principle boycotting the elections and reiterating our decision.”

The same development was reported on in a November 30, 2007, story by English publication Business Recorder with the headline: “APDM to boycott elections”.

Further, iVerify Pakistan checked the official X account of the PML-N to see if the party had made any announcement about boycotting the Feb 8 election but found nothing to suggest or confirm it.

Also, checking the social media pages of the PML-N and its leaders showed ample visual evidence of them casting their votes.