When you think of politics in IBA, you think of passionate campaigning, different parties uniting, and occasional tussles (insert dog having PTSD meme).
What you don’t think of are chai, memes, and regular meetups at Safeet with your group.
But for Baithak Awami Party or BAP, that became the true essence of what standing up for the student government meant.
BUT WHAT IS BAP???
Formed as a parody-cum-spam Instagram page in August, BAP looked to encompass the more humorous side of politics in IBA. The page often took friendly yet harmless jabs at ongoing campaigns while also creating organic satirical content that would put most influencers to shame. (Their Burns Road reel is a fan favourite).
As Sami Faisal, the President of this party, himself put it:
“Me and my friends would often have baithaks at Safeet or Mama’s Chai, and we’d recorded a lot of funny moments over time.
So, I thought: why not make a collective spam so we could have memories to take away when this was all over? And then, surprisingly, people started loving our content, so we thought to take it further and create our own party”.
POLITICS WITH BAP
If this article reads like a paragraph from your Pak History book, that’s because it’s intentional.
Likening their political campaign to Bangladesh’s separation from Pakistan (yes, we’re still trying to figure out the specifics of this), Baithak Awami Party, with their president Sami Faisal, took a unique stance during IBA elections:
“We just wanted to have a bit of fun and make content while doing so”
And fun it was.
From convincing Safeet owner Danish to hand out 10% discounts to voting students (sources say this was a scam), to getting representatives from US universities to aid in their campaign (again, we’re still trying to figure out the specifics of this), BAP grew from a small baithak of just 10 to 200+ impressed followers.
Some came for the campaigns, most came for the content, but everyone stayed for the chai.
THE RESULT
You could see however, even amongst the continuous “trolling”, that there was a certain air of seriousness in these campaigns.
This perhaps was best manifested in Sami’s impactful speech during the presidential debates and reinforced when BAP unfortunately lost the elections by a mere 787 votes (so close!).
Jokes aside, their campaign was a valiant effort, especially considering that it started off with just 10 individuals and zero political affiliations. For a lot of people (both hostelites and day scholars), BAP may not have won the elections, but they did win over quite a few hearts.
THE WAY FORWARD
So what now? Will BAP cease to exist? Will we ever see such a fun, unique and universally loved campaign again?
Perhaps the party’s manifesto answers it all:
“Masti nahi rukni chahye”.
