Daily Times Editorial July 31, 2013

A result foretold Not unexpectedly, the PML-N’s candidate, Mamnoon Hussain, won the presidential election by a handsome margin of 432 electoral college votes to his only rival, Justice (retd) Wajeehuddin Ahmed of the PTI’s 77. The electoral college structure gives one vote each to the members of the Senate and National Assembly (Parliament) as well as the smallest provincial Assembly, Balochistan. The other three provinces have a weighted value to each member’s vote so as to equalize the number of electoral college votes for each provincial Assembly. Mamnoon Hussain got 277 electoral college votes from Parliament, while Justice (retd) Wajeehuddin Ahmed garnered 34, with three out of the 314 votes cast being rejected. In the provincial Assemblies, Mamnoon Hussain got the following tally of electoral college votes: Punjab 54.14, Sindh 24.76, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) 21.49 and Balochistan 55. His rival got four electoral college votes from Punjab, 1.9 from Sindh, 36.17 from KP and one from Balochistan. The result was hardly a surprise, given that the ruling PML-N already had a majority of the electoral college votes as a result of its strength in the National Assembly (not so much in the Senate), Punjab and Balochistan Assemblies. So while the result was a foregone and predictable one, what made the election controversial was the direction by the Supreme Court (SC) to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to hold the election on July 30 on the plea of a PML-N leader Raja Zafarul Haq. What made the decision controversial was whether the SC should have intervened in a matter legitimately within the ambit of the ECP, and the manner in which the decision was handed down without hearing any of the other stakeholders. The ECP too has come in for a fair bit of stick for abdicating its responsibility in favour of the SC. As a result of this controversy, the PPP and its allied parties boycotted the presidential election, giving a deserted look on the day to the opposition benches and leaving a sour taste in the mouth at what might well turn out over time to be a pyrrhic victory for the PML-N. This because the new incumbent in the presidency may find it heavy going to find acceptability amongst the boycotting opposition. The next five years therefore could turn out to be very long indeed. It is a matter of regret that after the smooth transition through the ballot box of one government to another, the 12th president of the country could not be elected in a similar manner and spirit. Fault first and foremost lies with the ECP, which fell asleep it seems after the general elections on May 11 and failed to give a date in time that could have avoided the controversy. Its second blunder was refusing the PML-N’s request for reconsideration of the original August 6 date while at the same time tendering the gratuitous advice to the PML-N to go to the SC for direction, which the ECP would be bound to follow. What a travesty of what we hoped was an independent ECP. To make confusion worse confounded, the SC in its ‘haste’ accepted Raja Zafarul Haq’s plea without much ado and without bothering about the viewpoint of any other party. The SC has thus laid itself open to criticism from legal eagles as well as the public. There have been unprecedented (given the high esteem both institutions and their heads were held in until this debacle) calls for the resignation of the Chief Justice as well as the Chief Election Commissioner Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G Ebraheem. Even Imran Khan, considered to have sympathetic leanings toward the judiciary, for whose restoration he never tires of reminding us, his party stood on the barricades, has criticized both the judiciary and the ECP, not only for the presidential election debacle but also over his party’s complaints of rigging not being attended to properly. The whole unnecessarily controversial presidential election will make the task of the new incumbent of the presidency harder, polarize the polity, and render the workings of the democratic system subject to stresses and strains if not conflict. This ‘gift’ of the ECP and SC will return again and again to haunt the country for the next five years.